As two-way clock ticks, Heat’s Caleb Martin impressing everyone. And a change for Tucker
The notion of Caleb Martin becoming an important Heat component this season, let alone vital, seemed far-fetched when he signed a two-way contract with Miami in mid-September.
That’s hardly the case now.
Martin’s defense, energy — and on Wednesday, his three-point shooting — have been significant commodities on a team that has been short-handed in recent weeks.
With an impressive first two months, Martin has essentially compelled the Heat to convert his two-way contract to a standard contract by late February, at which point Miami could do it without surpassing the luxury tax threshold.
“Caleb played out of his mind tonight,” Heat wing Max Strus said after Martin scored a career-high 28 points, with eight rebounds, three assists and two blocks in a 113-104 win against Milwaukee. It was just the sixth start of his NBA career and second with the Heat.
“How can you not like Caleb Martin?” Strus added. “He’s always locked in and plays extremely hard.”
Martin did it with 9-for-12 shooting, including 6 for 8 on three-pointers and a thunderous late dunk to help seal the win.
“Shoutout to Caleb Martin,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said. “If he didn’t play that first half, we would have been blown out. His confidence is growing. He’s playing for a job, playing for a contract, playing to prove he belongs. Confidence is something you always get with the repetition. It’s putting him in position to be successful. A guy like him is working his butt off to prove he should be on a regular contract.”
Martin’s two-way contract allows him to be active for 50 of the Heat’s 82 games. So far, he has been active for 24 of the Heat’s 26 games.
If he’s active for the next 26, he would be eligible through the Jan. 31 game against Boston. The Heat might need to wait a couple more weeks after that to convert him to a two-way contract in order to avoid surpassing the tax threshold.
If the Heat didn’t want to wait to convert him to a standard deal in late February, the options would be going over the tax line (which the Heat prefers not to do), trying to dump KZ Okpala for a draft pick (and Okpala played very well Wednesday), or finding select games during the next two months to keep Martin inactive, thus stretching his clock.
Erik Spoelstra, not concerned with such things, said: “As a head coach, I just really enjoy watching him work every day and watching his approach to this and watching him compete. The guys love playing with him. He inspires everybody with his crazy efforts and his competitiveness. He’s our kind of guy.”
Martin entered Wednesday shooting just 31.1 percent on threes this season. He shot 24.8 percent on threes last season with Charlotte, after hitting 54.1 percent (20 for 37) of his threes as a Charlotte rookie in 2019-20.
But Martin raised his season three-point shooting percentage to 37.7 with Wednesday’s outburst.
“A lot of it is just confidence,” Martin said. “I just didn’t play with a lot of confidence last year for some reason, and a lot of that was on me and just in my own head. I feel a comfortability here, confidence from my teammates. They recognize I can be a consistent shooter. I put a lot of work in. I shoot as much as anybody during the summer.”
The 6-5 Martin marveled about how the perception of him has changed since he averaged 19.2 points at Nevada in his final college season. The previous season, he averaged 18.9 points and shot 40.3 percent on threes at North Carolina State.
“Before I even got to the league, I was a scorer,” he said. “That was my job coming out of college. I was always an offensive threat before I became a defensive threat. [On defense], I stole a lot from my [twin] brother [Cody].”
Martin is allowing the player he’s defending to shoot 36.8 percent (67 of 182). That’s best defensively on the Heat. Those players shoot 43.6 percent overall.
“I wasn’t even a defender coming out of college,” he said, adding that was “one of the knocks coming out of college. It’s nice to come full circle and people know I can defend. I knew I would have a lot of opportunities to catch and shoot.”
Martin, who went undrafted in 2019, has career-high averages in points (7.6), rebounds (3.2), shooting percentage (48.9) and minutes per game (19.6). More difficult to quantify is the value of his energy and high motor off the bench.
“I like to use my energy,” he said. “I like to try to spread it and let it radiate and let guys know how hard I’m playing. When you see guys playing really hard, it makes you want to play hard.”
THIS AND THAT
P.J. Tucker tied his career high with eight assists on Wednesday, and Okpala set a career high with nine rebounds.
With Bam Adebayo sidelined at least another month after thumb surgery, Tucker has been given a bigger role getting the team into offense.
“Bam is one of the most unique players in this league; you just cannot put him in any kind of conventional box on either side of the floor,” Spoelstra said. “His versatility is so dynamic and it’s unique.
“But P.J. has a lot of those qualities and we need that right now. While we’re working through this, we’ll use P.J. in a lot of the ways that we used Bam.”
Tucker — whose current 1.9 assist average would be a career high — said “missing Bam pushing it and being the trigger so much, somebody else has to do it. So I’ve been having to step up a little bit more lately, which I’m comfortable with. Especially with Kyle. Me and Kyle play so much together, it’s pretty natural and we play really well together in those situations.”
▪ Duncan Robinson will play in his 174th consecutive game Saturday against Chicago, equaling Glen Rice’s franchise record.
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 12:26 PM.
