Possibly no summer league, but Heat’s Yurtseven ready to put improvement plan into action
Despite spending most of the season out of the Miami Heat’s rotation, center Omer Yurtseven still found a way to flash intriguing potential during his rookie year.
It happened during a six-week stretch in the middle of the season while starting center Bam Adebayo sat out because of thumb surgery. Yurtseven averaged 13.6 points, 13.9 rebounds and 2.9 assists in a starting role in the 10 games leading up to Adebayo’s Jan. 17 return.
That stretch — plus work behind the scenes when Yurtseven wasn’t getting playing time — was enough to leave Heat veteran and captain Udonis Haslem impressed.
“I love O, man. O took some steps. O is strong as hell,” Haslem said after the Heat’s season came to an end in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. “O might be the strongest player we got.”
But once Adebayo recovered from thumb surgery and returned, Yurtseven again dropped out of the rotation and never found his way back in. The Heat went with a center rotation of Adebayo as the starter and Dewayne Dedmon as the backup for most of the season when they were both available.
Yurtseven, who turns 24 on Sunday, logged double-digit minutes in just six games over the final three months of the regular season following Adebayo’s return. And in the playoffs, Yurtseven played a total of 38 minutes and they all came late in either blowout wins or losses.
“It’s just getting an opportunity to play,” Haslem continued. “O just has to get the opportunity to play and go out there and contribute. You know, we got a lot of guys that didn’t get a chance to go out there and play. But the one thing we did have is guys that when they got their opportunity and their number was called, they stepped up and they contributed. I think that’s what O did time and time again, and he proved that he’s reliable, he’s capable and if he gets consistent minutes that he can be a consistent basketball player for us.”
Yurtseven’s rebounding was elite during his stint as the Heat’s fill-in center, finishing with double-digit rebounds in 14 consecutive games before Adebayo’s return. That’s the longest such streak by a rookie in Heat history and stands alone as the second-longest overall streak in team history behind only Hassan Whiteside’s string of 19 consecutive games in 2017.
Yurtseven also grabbed at least 12 rebounds in 11 straight games while Adebayo was out, which is the longest such streak in Heat history. The last rookie to pull that off in at least 11 consecutive games was Blake Griffin during the 2010-11 season.
“I think my biggest takeaway for me is the hunger it gave me and I’m also grateful for it,” Yurtseven said to the Miami Herald as he reflected on his rookie season. “I was given an opportunity and took full advantage of it for that six-week stretch. Then afterwards, just stayed the course, stayed professional and did my job and stayed ready. Whenever I was called on, I felt like I gave it my all.”
Yurtseven believes that stretch proved “I belong in the league and that I can be a force in this league. It really gave me the understanding and the confidence of knowing what I can do and knowing what I have to do to get there.”
But it was back in summer league last year that Yurtseven proved he deserved a spot on the Heat’s roster. He was a revelation with averages of 22.4 points and 11.2 rebounds per game for the Heat’s summer team to earn a standard contract from Miami.
Yurtseven is not expected to play in summer league this year, though, because of obligations with the Turkish national team as they take part in qualifying tournaments in the coming weeks. The plan is for Yurtseven to be in Las Vegas in July to work with Heat coaches and practice with the summer league team, but he probably won’t play in games.
“I want to play no matter where it is,” Yurtseven said in late May. “I have to go to the national team. So if that takes me away from summer league, I might not be able to. But I want to do it all if I can do it all.”
While there may not be summer league games to work on different aspects of his game, Yurtseven (6-11, 275 pounds) has a clear vision of what he wants to focus on this offseason.
“I would say speed and force are two, whether it be defensive or offensive,” Yurtseven said. “But especially being able to guard one through five is going to be No. 1. I have the size for it, I have the physical abilities for it. I was blessed with this body. So I think that would be huge. I guess the perimeter shot, the three-pointer is going to keep clicking and getting marginally better every day. I just got to keep putting in reps on that.”
Heat president Pat Riley listed “strength, mobility, foot work, back to the basket strength” as areas that Yurtseven needs to improve in.
Yurtseven is on track to return to the Heat, with a $1.8 million team option in his contract for next season that Miami must decide on by June 29. The decision to exercise the team option in Yurtseven’s contract to bring him back should be an easy one based on his potential and minimal cap hit.
Whether Yurtseven will be promoted to a more consistent role next season is less certain. Adebayo will remain the starter and coach Erik Spoelstra was reluctant to play him alongside Yurtseven this past season.
The backup center job could be up for grabs, though, with Dedmon set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. How far the Heat’s front office is willing to go to re-sign Dedmon could depend on how much confidence it has in Yurtseven potentially stepping into Dedmon’s spot in the rotation next season.
“I think he’s only going to get better,” Haslem said of Yurtseven. “I don’t think people have even seen him scratch the surface of his skill level. We used him as a roll to the basket big, but he can also step away and stretch the floor and shoot the three a little bit and do things like that.”
This story was originally published June 16, 2022 at 10:33 AM.
