Getty Miami Heat president Pat Riley looks on during the 2018 NBA Draft Combine.
If you put any stock at all into preseason hoops, it’s hard not to feel good about where the Miami Heat sit currently. After all, the team finished its exhibition slate with a 4-1 record and a blowout win over Kevin Durant and the rival Brooklyn Nets to its credit.
And for all the talk of Pat Riley whiffing in his pursuit of another star — like the aforementioned KD or even Donovan Mitchell — the Heat continue to boast an enviable core and one of the deeper rosters in the Association. That said, some among the hardwood intelligentsia are scratching their heads at the club’s relatively uneventful summer.
For his part, Bleacher Report‘s Grant Hughes noted that Miami “made sensible signings” as it worked to keep its crew from last season intact. However, he was still compelled to give the Heat’s offseason a disappointing C- grade. And the reason why may just surprise you.
“The Heat appear to be an objectively worse team without [PJ Tucker] — one that did little to improve the chances of advancing past last year’s conference finals trip,” he wrote.
Hughes: The Heat Likely to Feel the Loss of Tucker
Given Tucker’s age and his middling spot in the Heat’s pecking order in 2021-22, his South Beach exit is one that could easily be glossed over in evaluating the efforts of Riley and Co. However, Hughes sees the departure as a big one for the club:
Miami couldn’t retain P.J. Tucker, losing him to the conference-rival Sixers and failing to replace him in free agency. Jimmy Butler functions fine as a power forward in playoff settings, but it’s not ideal to subject him to the punishment of playing up a position for the entire regular season. Caleb Martin is back on a three-year, $20.4 million deal, but he’s similarly undersized for full-time 4 duties.
Tucker is 37 and due for a steep decline. If that happens, the Heat won’t miss him. Moving on from a player a year too early might turn out to be better than trying to do it a year too late. All the same, Miami is missing a key starter.
This much is certain: Tucker played a significant role in the Heat’s somewhat surprising success last season. His net rating of 6.2 was the second-best mark teamwide (trailing only Bam Adebayo at 8.1). And he also paced the rotation regulars in three-point shooting, connecting at a 41.5% clip from deep.
Whether he’ll have a similar impact in Philly this season is difficult to say. But the Heat will absolutely miss everything he brought when he was in the lineup.
Hughes didn’t punish Miami in his grades solely for losing Tucker, though.
Questions About the Herro Signing
The B/R scribe also went in on the decision to dole out the mega-bucks for Tyler Herro, writing:
There’s some real sticker shock here, considering Herro is an offense-only player who managed a positive on-off split for the first time in his career this past season. Even with the cap going up and Herro’s annual salary counting for roughly 20 percent of it going forward, it’s hard to feel great about paying roughly $30 million per season for a sixth man—even an award-winning one.
Herro has been a polarizing figure among league decision-makers, with some believing he can take another step into the realm of stardom while others see him as being nothing more than the bench sparkplug we’ve seen so far.
In any case, after doling out a regrettable sum to keep Duncan Robinson — who spent the 2022 playoffs glued to the bench — in the fold, the Heat can’t afford to have $30ish million more in dead money on their books.