What the Miami Heat should do at the trade deadline
The NBA trade deadline comes up on Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern, so we’ve decided to throw the spotlight on some specific teams who could be active to either help bolster their playoff chances or clean house in order to rebuild for the future.
The Miami Heat might be the NBA’s biggest surprise. Right now, they’re the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference standings but are only 1.5 games back of the 2 seed. They’re 22-3 at home and have one of the best offenses in the league despite employing a bunch of former G-Leaguers and cast offs.
Nobody but the Heat players themselves thought this was possible. With every week that passes they look more and more like a top-4 team in the playoffs. Thursday’s deadline gives them a chance to lock that in.
What the Heat should do
The Heat are in a very peculiar place given the fact that they don’t have many assets to deal around. They traded away their 2021 first round pick (unprotected) and a 2023 first round pick (lottery protected). Because they’ve dealt those picks they can’t move their 2020 or 2022 first round picks per the Stepien rules that prevent teams from dealing picks in consecutive years.
Their best move would be trading the assets on their roster — that means Tyler Herro and Justise Winslow will probably end up being their most tradeable pieces.
They won’t do it, but they should package those two together in a deal for Jrue Holiday. The Pelicans don’t seem keen on moving Holiday — they’re trying to make a push for the 8th seed in the West.
BUT if you throw Herro and Winslow in there with, say, Dion Waiters, then it might be worth it for New Orleans. They’d at least have to kick the tires on that one.
What the heat will do
It’s really hard to tell with this Heat team. Holding tight is definitely an option here — they’re already a really good team!
But, come on, y’all. We know what’s going to happen here. Somebody is going to get moved and they’re going to make a wild deal we didn’t see coming.
It’s Pat Riley, fam. That’s just what he does. He throws his rings on the table and gets people to say yes to him… except for LeBron James. And they’ll somehow do it without actually moving Herro, too, which will be the part that confuses us the most.