Will Heat again turn to big lineups this season? Here are some of the options. And a roster breakdown
The 2019-20 season was one of contrasting styles for the Miami Heat. Just ask Meyers Leonard.
For most of the regular season before play was suspended in March amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Heat leveraged its frontcourt depth and versatility to often play big lineups. That meant starting Leonard, a 7-footer, next to Bam Adebayo for the first 49 games of the season before Leonard missed each of the 16 games prior to the league shutdown because of a sprained left ankle.
Once the season resumed, the Heat turned to smaller lineups after acquiring forwards Jae Crowder and Andre Iguodala at the trade deadline about a month before play was suspended. When the season restarted, Crowder started in place of Leonard, who logged just 31 minutes of playing time in three games during the Heat’s 21-game playoff run.
But with Leonard re-signing with the Heat and Crowder leaving Miami to sign with the Phoenix Suns in free agency this offseason, the Heat could again turn to bigger lineups when this upcoming season begins.
“For starters, I would just say I don’t know that we’re looking at bully ball and I’ll explain why,” Leonard said Saturday morning during a Zoom call with reporters when asked if the Heat’s size will lead to a “bully ball” style this season. “I’m a unique five. Bam is a very unique four, five. Obviously, Bam has size, strength, athleticism and all those things. But he’s incredibly, incredibly skilled and can play out on the floor, handle the ball, get others involved. Then I’m unique because I shot 40 percent from three and do something totally different than most traditional centers do. I think personally that it’s going to be good to have big bodies. I would say throughout an NBA season that tends to, in my opinion, help a team. You can wear on teams. You can do different things, you can pound the glass.”
Along with retaining Leonard, the Heat brought back 6-11 center Kelly Olynyk and added Precious Achiuwa (6-9, 225 pounds) in the first round of this year’s draft. Olynyk is again expected to be part of Miami’s rotation as a big man who averaged 19.4 minutes of playing time in 67 regular-season games with the Heat last season, and Achiuwa will compete for minutes and likely get some court time as a rookie who was selected with the 20th overall pick.
“I feel like it’ll work because we brought back a lot of skilled big men,” Adebayo said Friday. “All of us are versatile. When you got bigs that are versatile that can help the team and help the guards do different things, it just makes our team better. Then you have two of us out there on the court at the same time, it’s a big difference. I feel like us being so versatile at the big spot is going to help us out a lot this year.”
The question is: Who can play alongside Adebayo, the Heat’s All-Star center who recently signed a max extension that’s the richest contract in franchise history?
Leonard had success alongside Adebayo last season, as the the starting group of Kendrick Nunn, Jimmy Butler, Duncan Robinson, Adebayo and Leonard posted a plus/minus of plus-121 last season. That group ended the regular season with the fifth-best plus/minus in the NBA among five-man lineups, but the Nunn-Butler-Robinson-Adebayo-Leonard lineup was not used in the playoffs.
The Heat outscored opponents by 105 points in 781 minutes with Adebayo and Leonard on the court together last season, and the Adebayo-Leonard frontcourt could again be used to start games this upcoming season.
“Bam and I just ended up making a lot of sense,” Leonard said. “... I just think we are both very unique in our own right. Bam is an exceptional player. A young star who can handle the ball, get others involved, can make a mid-range jumper, probably can knock down some corner threes this year and just is incredibly, incredibly versatile. For me, I’m competitive as hell. Of course, I would love to average 20 [points] and 10 [rebounds], but I just don’t care. I really don’t. I care about the Miami Heat winning basketball games. I’m OK spacing the floor, playing my role, using my voice on the defensive end, boxing out the opponent’s best rebounder so Bam and Jimmy and whoever else can fly in there and grab rebounds and then we can take off in transition. That’s what’s important to me.”
Olynyk didn’t have as much success alongside Adebayo last season, but the results were still positive as Miami was a plus-four in the 584 minutes they played together last season. Adebayo and Olynyk have had a lot of success in the past, though, with the duo posting an impressive plus/minus of plus-214 over the past three seasons.
The fact that both Leonard (53 made threes on 41.4 percent shooting from deep) and Olynyk (95 made threes on 40.6 percent shooting from deep) can stretch the floor with their outside shooting allows them to complement Adebayo’s paint-heavy offensive game.
It’s still unclear whether Achiuwa will be able to play alongside Adebayo this season because their games may still be too similar, although Heat president Pat Riley said last month that he “absolutely” envisions them sharing the court down the road. Achiuwa is still growing as an outside shooter, as he shot 13 of 40 (32.5 percent) on threes and 59.9 percent from the foul line as a freshman at Memphis last season.
While there are plenty of options for the Heat to go big, there are also still options to rely on smaller and more versatile lineups like it did for most of last season’s playoff run.
Miami added forward Moe Harkless (6-7, 220) in free agency and Iguodala (6-6, 215) is still on the roster. There’s also second-year forward KZ Okpala (6-8, 215), who is expected to compete for a rotation spot after spending a chunk of his rookie season in the G League.
“When you want to win at the highest level and get that final win, you have to have pretty much everything,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said on Thursday. “You have to check a lot of different boxes. You have to be tested, but you have to have an incredible versatility. You have to be able to have a lot of different kind of things for different circumstances. And opponents at that level, the elite of the elite, pose answers for every kind of question. So you have to be able to bring a lot of different things. We feel really good about who we’ve added and the versatility we’ve added, not only on the perimeter but also from a size standpoint.”
THE START OF IT ALL
The Heat is scheduled to hold its first team practice of training camp on Sunday at AmericanAirlines Arena with its roster at the 20-man preseason limit. Here’s the breakdown:
There are 15 players on guaranteed standard contracts: Butler, Goran Dragic, Iguodala, Olynyk, Leonard, Avery Bradley, Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Harkless, Achiuwa, Robinson, Nunn, Udonis Haslem, Okpala and Chris Silva.
There’s one player on a two-way contract: Gabe Vincent.
There are four players on Exhibit 10 contracts, who are competing for Miami’s final two-way deal: Paul Eboua, BJ Johnson, Max Strus and Breein Tyree.
NBA teams must trim rosters to a maximum of 15 players on standard contracts and two players on two-way contracts for the Dec. 22 start of the regular season.
