The NBA season will be here before you know it and FanSided is here to get you ready. In the lead up to Opening Night, we’ll be previewing two teams each day, reviewing roster changes, discussing important players and challenges, and hearing the perspective of our FanSided site experts. Let’s get ready for basketball!
Roster changes
Inputs: Wayne Ellington (SG, signed for two years, $12 million); Rodney McGruder (PG, signed for three years, partially guaranteed); James Johnson (SF, signed for one year, $4 million); Derrick Williams (PF, signed for one year, $5 million); Stefan Jankovic (PF, signed for one year, non-guaranteed); Willie Reed (PF, signed for two years, $2 million); Okaro White (PF, signed for one year, non-guaranteed); Dion Waiters (SG, signed for two years, $6 million); Luke Babbitt (SF, traded from the New Orleans Pelicans); Beno Udrih (signed for one year, $1.5 million); Keith Benson (C, signed for one year, partially guaranteed)
Outputs: Dwyane Wade (SG, signed with the Chicago Bulls); Dorell Wright (SF, signed with the Los Angeles Clippers); Chris Bosh (PF, ???); Amare Stoudemire (PF, retired); Joe Johnson (SG, signed with the Utah Jazz); Luol Deng (PF, signed with the Los Angeles Lakers); Gerald Green (SF, signed with the Boston Celtics)
Retained: Hassan Whiteside (C, signed for four years, $98 million); Udonis Haslem (PF, signed for one year, $4 million); Tyler Johnson (SG, signed for four years, $50 million)
Most important player
The Heat’s most important player is Justise Winslow — not only on the court, but to the team’s future. Winslow, only 20, made the All-Rookie Second Team last season, and after the loss of Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh. Luol Deng and Joe Johnson, the Heat will be looking to Winslow for more. Good look. He’s been a lockdown defender from day one in the league. Only Hassan Whiteside (26) and Luol Deng (30) had more defensive win shares for the Heat last year than Winslow, who has years to grow even stronger and wiser.
The trouble is Winslow’s shooting. Last year he averaged just 8 points on 42 percent shooting (27 percent on threes). Not 8 per game. Per 36. Passing lanes shrink to the size of capillaries when defenders can play off their man, which may have contributed to Winslow’s sub-2 assists per night. His IQ and intangible work within the offense allude to tantalizing upside. But Winslow’s rookie numbers fall well beneath Michael Kidd-Gilchrist’s first-year levels, and MKG wasn’t playing with Hall of Famers and seven-time All-Stars. The Heat need Winslow to be more than MKG 2.0.
One way to get more from Winslow would be to ask more. Last season, his usage rate was in the bottom 5 percent of all qualifying wings. Translation: the Miami offense depended as much on Winslow as Minnesota’s did on Tayshaun Prince. The rebuilding Heat know South Beach is a free agent destination dream. The dream is an even easier sell if Winslow’s shooting improves enough to make him a two-way star.
Next: The NBA's best rim protectors
Biggest rivalry
Rivalry: competing for success and superiority within the same field. More than any man, Pat Riley is the Heat, a man so competitive his biggest rival is himself. His success. But was there a hidden cost to his success?
When LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade in 2010, Riley — already a five-time title-winning coach in LA who built the Heat’s 2006 championship — had done something even more powerful than win: he’d made the Heat the Yankees. Imaginations ran wild among fans and haters we’d measure the breadth of their dominance by “not two…not three…not four…not five…not six…not seven…” Nobody had LeBron leaving after four seasons, and not on good terms with Riley. Or Wade, Mr. Miami Heat, leaving the team two years later, after consecutive summers of bitter contract negotiations. Riley announced Chris Bosh’s medical concerns mean his Heat career is “probably over,” something Bosh neither agrees with nor appreciates. Once James departed, moving on from Wade and Bosh makes sense. But it is a brutal sense, a nice and tidy bottom-line sense that burns and lingers in the hearts of the offended. Players talk.
In closing the curtain on the Big Three the way he did, Riley raised the stakes astronomically. A sweeter stroke from Winslow and a full season of work out of Whiteside let Riley walk into any meeting next summer as the eight-ringed man with the plan. If Winslow stagnates or the combustible Whiteside detonates, Riley is left asking players to trust him. Will the ruthlessness with which he conquered the past turn off a humane superstar (a la LeBron) who could win him the future?
Related Story: Portland Trail Blazers Season Preview
What does success look like?
— Wes Goldberg, @AllUCanHeat1, All U Can Heat
A Pat Riley team will always be gunning to make the playoffs, so anything less than is probably considered a failure in his eyes. But nevermind Riley for a sec.. the loss of Dwyane Wade to the call of the Windy City, Chris Bosh to an unexpected recurrence of blood clots, and — though to a less important extent — Luol Deng and Joe Johnson to free agency, means that a playoff run will be out of reach.
Most mathy projections have the Heat winning somewhere around 36 games, and I’d say that’s about right. Barring a circa 2014 Kawhi or circa 2015 Draymond sized leap from one of its youngsters, surpassing .500 isn’t likely.
This is the youngest team the Heat have had in a long time — since Dwyane Wade’s rookie season — with a core of Justise Winslow, Josh Richardson, Tyler Johnson and Hassan Whiteside. The goal this season is to develop that group, specifically finding out if Winslow has what it takes to be a franchise player.
If Winslow can do that, it probably looks like 15-ish points per game while still playing lock-down perimeter defense. He’ll also need to show he can play some small-ball 4, and average a few assists per game now that the ball will be in his hand more. Goran Dragic will be the lead facilitator, but Winslow ought to develop into a secondary ball handler.
I mean, really, Winslow could show out, Richardson and Johnson could make reasonable improvements and Whiteside could continue his growth (or just not slide back) and the Heat could win just 30 games and this season should still be considered a success. After an offseason of losing cornerstone players, this season is all about finding the next group on which to build on.