30 teams in 30 days: Miami Heat offseason preview

The Heat were one of the great turnaround stories in NBA history last year. While they were unable to turn it into a playoff berth, the reverberations of their 30-11 finish could be felt in South Beach for the next few years. Led by Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside, both of whom are under contract for at least the next two seasons, Miami is in prime position to add a superstar to the team if one is willing to come play for the Heat.

The Heat had their star, of course, but Chris Bosh’s blood clots continued to act up in the 2015-16 season and he sat out the entirety of last season. Miami is expected to receive a medical retirement for Bosh, eliminating the final two years and $52.1 million they owe him from their books. It’s important to note that Bosh will still get his money — it just won’t count toward the Heat’s salary cap. Removing Bosh’s contract pushes the Heat into a select group of teams who will have sizable cap space this summer.

The Heat begin the summer with $13.9 million in space, but can open up more than double that amount by relinquishing control of their incumbent free agents. Udonis Haslem wants to play another season and hopes to be in Miami, but it almost certainly won’t be for more than his $7.6 million cap hold. Renouncing Haslem’s cap hold and re-signing him to a minimum contract gives the Heat another $5.2 million in space and inches them closer to opening up room for Gordon Hayward, for whom the Heat have been rumored to be in the mix for.

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James Johnson, Dion Waiters and Willie Reed were all key contributors to the Heat last season, but all three will be free agents after just one season in Miami, which means that they’ll all be non-Bird free agents. Similar to Kevin Durant in Golden State, each of these guys can only be paid up to 120 percent of their salary last season for Miami to use their non-Bird Rights. If they want more money, the Heat will have to dip into their cap space to bring them back, as if they were outside free agents signing with the team.

All three will not be back for those small amounts, as they each showed that they were able to contribute to a potential playoff team. Johnson and Waiters in particular will look to cash in on their performance last season. Johnson would be a great pickup for any contending team with the space to sign him and will have suitors around the league. Waiters will be looking to get paid in the wake of the disaster that was last summer’s free agency for him, when he fell through the cracks and had to take the Room Exception in Miami just to have a place to play in 2016-17.

Each guy being a non-Bird free agent who won’t take less than the 120 percent Miami can offer them under the non-Bird provision effectively means that Miami can renounce their rights and have just as good a chance at re-signing them. Doing so opens up another $9.7 million in available money, bringing their running total to $29.0 million.

At this point, they’d be very close to getting to the $30.3 million required to sign Hayward to his max contract and would just need to either renounce Luke Babbitt or cut one of their myriad of non-guaranteed contracts. Only Okaro White is in real danger of being released since Wayne Ellington, Josh Richardson and Rodney McGruder provide far too much value on their current deals to make it worth it to cut them.

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The Heat will, in all likelihood, have to choose between their crew of non-Bird free agents and a max-level guy. There just isn’t the money to after everyone, unless those three are all willing to take massive pay cuts over what they could receive on the open market. With Pat Riley at the helm, anything is possible, but even he might not be able to pull off everything this summer.