Mailbag: Confidence or a calculated risk? Explaining the Heat’s Damian Lillard gamble
The Miami Herald’s Heat mailbag is here to answer your pressing offseason questions.
If you weren’t able to ask this time, send your questions for future mailbags via Twitter (@Anthony_Chiang). You can also email them in to achiang@miamiherald.com.
@heatdolphinyank: Why are the Heat so confident that Dame will ask out?
Anthony Chiang: I’m not sure how confident the Heat is that Damian Lillard will ask the Portland Trail Blazers to trade him this offseason. But the Heat believes there’s at least a chance that Lillard could become available and that was enough to stop short of going all in for Bradley Beal.
While the Heat made a push for Beal, Lillard has clearly been the top target. And the Heat was reluctant to make an offer for Beal that would take it out of the Lillard sweepstakes and also leave it in salary-cap prison for the foreseeable future, allowing the Phoenix Suns to outbid Miami to acquire Beal from the Washington Wizards.
If Lillard does indeed request a trade, the Heat won’t show as much restraint.
Thursday’s NBA Draft should help bring more clarity to Lillard’s situation, as the Heat waits to pounce if he asks the Trail Blazers to trade him.
The belief is that Lillard, 32, would rather the Trail Blazers trade the No. 3 overall pick in this week’s draft to add win-now players to immediately improve the team’s odds of again becoming a contending team in the Western Conference.
If the Trail Blazers keep the No. 3 pick and get younger, Lillard could decide to take his career elsewhere instead of going through another rebuild in Portland. Lillard is under contract for the next four years at $216 million.
The safe route for the Heat would have been to improve its offer to the Wizards to land Beal, even if it meant taking itself out of the Lillard chase.
But the Heat didn’t play it safe. Miami instead took a risk, now hoping that Lillard or another star becomes available in the coming days, weeks or months before the new CBA makes executing a trade for a high-salary player very challenging next offseason.
Was it a a calculated risk that will pay off? We’ll soon find out.
@305vsEveryone: What are the chances they decide to just re-sign Max Strus and Gabe Vincent and “run it back”?
Anthony: If the Heat can’t upgrade the roster through a trade this offseason, its best path to remain at least at the level it was this past season is to “run it back.”
That’s because the Heat will likely only be able to offer minimum contracts to outside free agents.
The Heat, obviously, doesn’t have cap space.
The Heat won’t be able to acquire a player through a sign-and-trade because such a move would hard cap Miami’s payroll at a number it’s already expected to be above.
And, unless significant salary is shed, the Heat won’t be permitted to use a mid-level exception this offseason as a second-apron team.
But the Heat can leverage the Bird rights it holds for its own impending free agents like Strus and Vincent to exceed the salary cap to re-sign them up to their maximum salaries. Letting Strus and Vincent go without adding talent via trade will leave Miami filling those holes with minimum contract players or through the draft.
Of course, signing Strus and/or Vincent to double-digit salaries for next season will only make the Heat’s luxury tax bill more expensive.
@Alex41062230: Any affordable targets we can go after with the vet minimum who you have your eyes on?
Anthony: Let’s see what happens ahead of the start of free agency on June 30 before we get to this. A potential trade in the coming days could shape the answer to this question.
This story was originally published June 20, 2023 at 9:22 AM.
