Heat starters reunited. And Heat wants sellouts next season, but players union has doubts
The Miami Heat’s starting lineup is back together, for the first time since the day after the Super Bowl. Whether that quintet can recapture its 28-10 October through early February magic remains to be seen.
For the first time since Meyers Leonard’s serious ankle injury sidelined him for 16 days, Leonard and Bam Adebayo were reunited as the Heat’s starting power rotation, paired with Jimmy Butler, Kendrick Nunn and Duncan Robinson during Tuesday’s scrimmage loss to Memphis.
That group was Miami’s best five-man lineup statistically this season but was outscored by 10 points combined to start both halves on Tuesday.
Of all the five-man lineups that played a single minute in the NBA this season, that five-man Heat group was the sixth-best in plus/minus, outscoring team by 121 points in their 488 minutes together. It would be a surprise if the Heat did not use that quintet to open its first seeding game at 1 p.m. Saturday against Denver.
“We’re still getting back into a rhythm of things, everybody, not just the starting unit, everybody,” Butler said. “And I don’t know how long it will take. But I know it has to happen.”
The NBA’s best five-man lineup this season has been Milwaukee’s group of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez, Kris Middleton, Eric Bledsoe and Wes Matthews, who are a plus-180.
Adebayo said the reason he and Leonard complement each other well in the starting group is simple: “I’m more a slasher and he’s more of a spot shooter. We both play offense and defense.”
Adebayo, who had been sidelined with COVID-19 [according to Nunn], is “in a very good high fitness level,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “He was pretty sharp” Tuesday.
HEAT HOPING FOR SELLOUTS
Eric Woolworth, the Heat’s president of business operations, told Fox Sport Sun’s Jason Jackson that “we plan on playing next season in front of fans and plan on having a sold-out facility just like we’ve had since 2009.”
But the union isn’t so sure that’s feasible.
“If tomorrow looks like today, I don’t know how we say we can do it differently [than playing in a bubble],” NBA executive director Michele Roberts told ESPN this week. “If tomorrow looks like today, and today we all acknowledge — and this is not Michele talking, this is the league, together with the PA and our respective experts saying, ‘This is the way to do it’ — then that’s going to have to be the way to do it.
“I’m not in the Trump camp in believing it’s all going to go away in two weeks, but I’m praying, praying that there will be a different set of circumstances that will allow us to play in a different way. … So it may be that, if the bubble is the way to play, then that is likely gonna be the way we play next season, if things remain as they are.”
Woolworth said previously during a Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce virtual luncheon that “there is a sense among most of my peers in the NBA we should not be starting next season until we can get all the fans in the building. Partial fan scenarios are not only not ideal in terms of how you figure out who will be there and not be there, but it’s financial suicide for us.”
Woolworth explained why: “You can have a partial-fan scenario that’s socially distanced and facility like ours, that gets you 2,500 people. What kind of fan experience can we deliver for 2,500 fans? It’s not going to be loud. People are going to be sitting away from each other. ... Why would we do that? I don’t understand talking about anything between the two [no fans or full capacity].
“We as an industry need to figure out how to get people into a full-capacity situation. Maybe that means we have to delay the start of the [2021-22] season. How can we get back to full arenas where people feel they will be safe. There may be some people who won’t be part of that plan or shouldn’t be because they have pre-existing conditions.”
Woolworth said the tentative Dec. 1 start to next season could be pushed to January.
▪ During a segment on TNT’s NBA studio show on Tuesday, former teammates Dwayne Wade and Shaquille O’Neal heaped praise on Heat forward Udonis Haslem.
And Haslem said the experience in the NBA bubble in Lake Buena Vista “is nothing like I ever imagined. ... This is the perfect situation for guys like myself and my team. You lock us in a room; we feel like we’re the ones coming out.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 2:20 PM.
