Miami Heat won’t be fielding a G League team. What it means. And Goran Dragic’s dream
A six-pack of Miami Heat notes on a Tuesday:
▪ The Miami Heat has decided not to field a team in the G League bubble in suburban Atlanta this year, according to a league source.
As the Heat’s G League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce not only has been one of the NBA’s best G League teams but also served as a laboratory where young Heat prospects developed their games.
Duncan Robinson, Rodney McGruder, Derrick Jones Jr., KZ Okpala and others honed their skills there during the past several years.
But COVID-19 has forced the NBA to put all the G League teams in a campus outside Atlanta, and the Heat is one of about 10 teams that won’t participate.
The good news is that the league has loosened restrictions involving two-way players, meaning the two Heat players with two-way contracts can practice with the Heat all season and be available to play in 50 of the 72 games.
For the other 22 games, those two Heat players will be permitted to attend Heat home games at AmericanAirlines Arena.
Guard Gabe Vincent, who averaged 2.4 points in nine games for the Heat last season, is expected to be one of the Heat’s two players with two-way contracts. The Heat believes Vincent has considerable upside; he hit 129 three-pointers, making 40.6 percent of his attempts, in just 31 G League games last season.
The other two-way contract is expected to go to the player to emerge from a training camp competition featuring former Italian League forward Paul Eboua, an athletic 20-year-old; undrafted Mississippi rookie guard Breein Tyree, who was a big scorer in the Southeastern Conference; former Chicago Bulls wing prospect Max Strus; and former Orlando Magic developmental wing prospect BJ Johnson.
It’s also within the realm of possibility that Miami could keep two of those players if they outplay Chris Silva in training camp, though Silva has a guaranteed contract.
Eric Glass, who coached the Skyforce last season and coached the 2019 Heat Summer League team in Las Vegas, is expected to remain around the Heat this season.
Among players on last season’s Skyforce who are looking for work: former UM swingman Davon Reed and ex-Georgetown center Trey Mourning, son of Heat legend and executive Alonzo Mourning.
As for Vincent, he said he was working on playing off the ball a lot last season but once he arrived in the bubble, “I found myself handling the ball a lot more than I anticipated, playing more of a combo than a two guard. I found myself being primarily a point guard in the bubble. That was the emphasis.”
He said he studied tape of several players over the past year, including Avery Bradley, long before Bradley joined the Heat last month. “It will be nice to pick his brain outside of seeing it through some film,” Vincent said.
Vincent said it will be “different” this season, noting “the G League was super important” for players to develop.
Speaking of players in general (not himself), Vincent said: “To be a young man coming into the process not knowing if that outlet [the G League] will be available to you will have to be tough mentally.”
▪ For those wondering about a potential Heat pursuit of Houston’s James Harden — who reportedly would be amenable to a trade — keep in mind that ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Tuesday that Houston “hasn’t wavered” in wanting “a package that includes a young franchise cornerstone and a bundle of first-round picks and/or talented players on rookie contracts, sources said.”
The Heat currently is not permitted to trade any future first-rounders. Miami could trade a 2025 first-rounder if the Thunder and Heat agree to unlock protections on a 2023 Heat first-round pick that the Thunder owns.
Teams cannot trade first-round picks more than seven years out.
▪ Coach Erik Spoelstra sees differences in Heat center Meyers Leonard during the first three days of full-squad workouts, compared with Leonard during the early stages of the Orlando restart, when he fell out of the rotation and was not yet fully back in form because of a serious ankle sprain sustained the day after the Super Bowl.
“We started to see [Leonard round into form] the last three weeks of the bubble,” Spoelstra said on Tuesday. “He started to move better and look like himself [from] the first three months of the season. And if we’re totally objective about it, that was pretty much the deal when you have a third-degree sprain. They said it would probably take several months before you feel like you did before the injury. He grinded through it. The body heals on its own time. He’s moving a lot better. He had a really good practice” on Monday.
▪ Goran Dragic revealed he has been “dreaming about” winning a championship after getting very close. “Every night when I go to bed, I have this in my mind. Last year, we were close. But now we know what it takes to get there. It’s a long journey, but we have all the tools that we need. Definitely, I believe that we can win. That’s why I decided to come back.”
And Dragic gave a good answer when asked what Heat culture means to him.
“It means everything,” he said. “I’ve been here now for five years and you know at the beginning it’s hard to fit in because you need to be in the best shape. We measure body fat each day. But it definitely helped through my career. This is the way of life right now for me. What I was doing for the past five years, trying to be fit, trying to be in [the best] shape in my life, I have to admit I feel amazing. So that’s what is Miami Heat culture. That’s what we are proud of and I’m happy to be part of this team.”
▪ Bam Adebayo likes that Spoelstra said he’s a lot like Jimmy Butler.
“I feel like we weren’t the most skilled, we weren’t the most talented out of our group,” Adebayo said. “I feel like we’re similar because our work ethic is through the roof and we both came from nothing and made something out of it. That’s why I respect Jimmy so much because his story is kind of like mine, just in a way different sense of where he comes from and how he was raised. But we all were raised tough.”
▪ Quick stuff: On JJ Redick’s podcast, the veteran New Orleans Pelicans guard said to Tyler Herro: “In the fourth quarter of games, did you feel like because you are white with short arms teams would target you defensively?”
Herro’s response? “Me and Duncan [Robinson] know at this point going into the game, they are coming at us no matter what”....
Former Heat center Hassan Whiteside, who had to settle for a minimum deal with Sacramento, was immediately asked by Kings writers about the perception that he’s a bad teammate. “I think I’m a really great teammate,” he said. “I don’t know where that’s coming from. I look around. I don’t know where that’s coming from.”..
Because of NBA COVID-19 restrictions, Heat announcers Eric Reid, John Crotty, Jason Jackson, Mike Inglis, Ruth Riley-Hunter and Jose Paneda are expected to call road games from AmericanAirlines Arena during the first half of the season.
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 1:49 PM.
