The Miami Heat offseason has already been plenty eventful. Another move might be somewhere down the pipeline.
The Heat deserves strong recognition for putting together the best offseason of any team in the NBA. Miami added Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis in a blockbuster trade that mortgaged most of its assets and signed Klay Thompson, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Nick Richards in free agency.
Miami has one more roster spot available, generating plenty of speculation about the move the franchise could make next. One player who has made the rounds in rumors this offseason is former Heat guard Victor Oladipo, who is giving it his all to make an NBA comeback.
Miami Heat Watching Victor Oladipo
With the Heat having the 15th spot on its roster available and possessing $2.5 million under the apron, the team can bring on a minimum-salaried player. Could that be Oladipo, who last played in the NBA in 2023 as a member of the Heat?
According to team insider Ira Winderman, the Heat has kept an eye on Oladipo, who has often been seen working out at Kaseya Center this offseason.
“(He) Has been working out at Kaseya Center. And, yes, Heat have monitored,” Winderman wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
It appeared that Oladipo may not have been an option for the Heat after the team didn’t attend his pro day in Las Vegas last month, as Winderman reported.
“In a perfect world, you could sort through players on non-guaranteed contracts,” Winderman wrote recently for the Sun Sentinel. “But veterans willing to take such deals are few and far between. Victor Oladipo might be an exception, but the Heat did not even attend his open tryout in Las Vegas during summer league.”
Oladipo, 34, last appeared in the NBA game during the Heat’s playoff series against the Boston Celtics in 2023. In Game 3, The former All-Star went down with a serious knee injury, derailing his career from there.
Oladipo Seeking Another Opportunity
On Tuesday, Oladipo took to X to share a letter he wrote in the Players Tribune titled A Letter to NBA GMs.
“So that’s where I’m at with everything,” Oladipo wrote in the letter. “I don’t know how my journey here is going to end……. Maybe a team out there will give me a chance. Maybe no team will. That’s really up to you all. But if you’re in an NBA front office, and you took the time to read this: Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I can promise you one thing, always, about my basketball story … from the first page to the last. It’s a love story.”
Oladipo mentioned the Boston-Miami series where he suffered a devastating injury.
“Then in 2023, with Miami, I tore my patellar tendon,” Oladipo began. “And to be honest, I actually think that injury was a blessing in disguise. Because from the moment my injuries first started, it’s like I’d been on this chase. I’d been chasing the idea of what we were so close to achieving as a team in Indy, and who I was so close to becoming as a player in the league. And it’s like ever since then … I’d just been trying so hard to get BACK there, you know?? So hard that I think I was rushing the process, and trying to make up for lost time. But my patella injury changed all that. Like to me that was God’s way of saying, Victor. You need to slow down, and get right, and stop chasing the ghost of what could have been. Then you need to build yourself back up into something that’s real.”
Oladipo believes he has a lot more left in the tank, and the Heat has room for one more player.
Until Oladipo gets another opportunity or the Heat signs a player, rumors will continue to link both sides.
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