Pat Riley and the Miami Heat prioritized Hassan Whiteside over Dwyane Wade, was it the right call? (Photo: USA TODAY Sports – Jasen Vinlove)
By Adam Spinella
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Twenty-eight months ago, LeBron James and the Miami Heat were the kings of the NBA. Coming off back-to-back NBA Championships, countless primetime games and reaping the benefits of three future Hall-of-Famers in their prime, Pat Riley was confident he could count on his franchise to endure. After all, this is Pat Riley. former coach of the Showtime Lakers. He got everyone to buy-in in New York, built Miami into a championship contender and convinced LeBron James to join him in South Beach. He’s a brilliant tactician, motivator and coach in every facet of the game. There was seemingly no way he could lose the empire he built in South Beach.
Since then, LeBron James has hoisted another Larry O’Brien trophy… in a Cavaliers uniform. Dwyane Wade bolted South Beach for hometown Chicago after a contract standoff with Riley following years of good-faith agreements on Wade’s part. Chris Bosh’s basketball career quickly and contentiously appears over due to blood clot issues. All three members of the Big Three, in different ways, have left the playing floor and given Riley nothing in return. The empire that the clean-cut maestro most recently built has crumbled, and he stands at the center of the rubble, searching for a way to pick up the pieces.
A bag of championship rings. That’s what Pat Riley laid down on the table in front of LeBron James in July 2010. It’s a powerful image — here is a champion who has coached some of the best to ever play the game, laying down a plan of just what it takes to get back to the promise land. How do you not believe him? Everything that Riley accomplished in his career has been done with a certain style and swagger that is incredibly appealing. And Riley’s won everywhere he’s been — everywhere. When someone with that type of pedigree speaks, people listen. Superstars listen.
He won four titles in a seven-year span with the Lakers, topping 50 wins in each of his nine seasons with the franchise and three Coach of the Year designations. Moving to New York, he won the Atlantic Division in each of his four seasons and coached the Knicks to the NBA Finals. It wasn’t until Riley took the job in Miami, after 13 years as an NBA head coach, where he won fewer than 50 games in a season. It wasn’t until his 20th season as a head coach that he missed the postseason, and that was with a post-injury Alonzo Mourning who struggled to regain his All-Star form. He took a few years off of coaching to focus on his front office duties, then returned mid-season in 2005 to propel the Heat to their first NBA Championship.
His front office accolades are just as recognizable. The crowned jewel is the signing of LeBron James and Chris Bosh, assembling the league’s first ever mega-team through free agency. Those Heat teams won two titles in four years and featured countless masterful acquisitions. Riley cleaned house upon starting in Miami way back in 1995, acquiring Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway, the two stalwarts of Miami’s late-90s playoff teams. Simply put, everything Riley touched turned to gold.
With each accomplishment came a premature ending. Mourning’s kidney troubles were fought intensely by Big ‘Zo, to no avail. The Shaq era in Miami was brief albeit fruitful, and many other high-profile players were moved on from by Riley due to “business reasons.” James, Wade and Bosh all seemed to dissipate before anyone was ready, and suddenly the Big Three era is gone.
Now might be the appropriate time to mention the times Riley has walked away from a winning, championship situation for his own personal gain. He left the infrastructure of the Lakers after a reported clash with Jerry West in 1990, resigning under his own accord. Soon after, he was across the country on the only stage larger than Los Angeles, soaking in the spotlight and pushing the Knicks to new heights. He left in what remains a sneaky, complicated and controversial fashion, heading for South Beach after the Heat offered him the ability to be President and even an ownership stake in the franchise. The Heat were accused of tampering with Riley, still under contract to the Knicks, and forced to compensate the Knicks with $1 million and a first round pick for Riley leaving. As polarizing as that decision was, it seems that Riley’s message of “team first” was one he was above. It’s hard to crucify LeBron or Dwyane Wade for doing what Riley had done before them.
LeBron was the first to go, leaving on his own terms and on good terms. He was the centerpiece of the Big Three despite Wade’s superhero status locally and Bosh’s charming personality. He left behind two capable superstars, an infrastructure of winning and a championship culture that seemed able to endure the loss of their superstar. There were questions about Miami’s true ability to compete for a title when LeBron left, and no answers emerged due to Bosh’s blood clot issues.
The Chris Bosh situation is unique, with Bosh still contesting his ability to play. In a situation where nobody should come off as the “bad guy”, the Heat organization has come out unfavorably in the face of public opinion. The spin from media, and from Bosh’s dismissive attitude towards being unfit to play, portrays Riley as controlling, emotionless and rigid. Now, Bosh is using the media to proclaim his self-believed ability to play, his unhappiness with the Heat organization and is swaying basketball fans to side with his emotional appeals. While the NFL gets blasted on a daily basis for not protecting their athletes or informing them of long-term risks, Riley sits atop an organization dragged through the mud for the opposite.
The Bosh saga has no end in sight. The NBAPA is now involved, and while the Heat are moving on and taking the high road through the media, it could be months before a resolution takes place. The Heat will have to wait until February, one year after Bosh’s last game played, to garner a Disabled Player Exception and wipe his contract off their books. That would allow Miami to grab a player around the trade deadline and absorb that salary into their cap space — a main reason some skeptics view the Heat as writing off Bosh in the long-term.
Somehow this never-ending adventure surrounding Bosh’s health has allowed Riley to momentarily escape criticism around his decision to let Dwyane Wade walk away. Despite what some Heat fans feel, Wade’s decision to depart was not completely out of left field. A year ago, Wade took his second pay cut to stay with the Heat (the first of which came when LeBron signed in 2010), signing a one-year, $20 million deal. The move pushed back the negotiations a year, where Riley hoped more cap space and a greater cap number would allow the two sides to come to a joint resolution. At the same time, Riley faced a looming extension with free agent Hassan Whiteside, the Heat’s young enigma with potential to be a true superstar. It’s where Riley’s golden touch finally brought him to a crossroads.
Whiteside, who signed with the Heat mid-way through the 2014 season, was not with the Heat long enough for the team to hold Bird rights in their free agency negotiation. That meant Riley, a master negotiator, wouldn’t be able to sign him without renouncing Wade’s cap hold in July 2016. Riley took the gamble, prioritizing the young center who is the beacon of light for the future. On its face, this decision makes theoretical sense — lock up younger players before older ones, refuse to sign aging players to long-term deals that hamper long-term flexibility.
Yet once again, Riley became the villain in the eyes of those who wanted the Heat to retain the franchise’s most popular player no matter the cost. Wade had been more than accommodating in past negotiations, and he (along with many) felt he was due his payday. Wade came off an incredibly successful season, where he logged additional minutes and still showed the ability to lead a playoff contender. And the Heat organization, 18 months prior to their negotiations with Wade, shipped away several future high-value draft picks to acquire Goran Dragic. Win-now mode was apparent, and the decision to move on from Wade seemed counterintuitive.
It’s a massive gamble on Riley’s part, hoping that he can construct a team worthy of redemption in the eyes of disgruntled fans, through second-tier free agents and former roster fillers. Fans don’t want to hear that this is a rebuild, but in a way, it is. Even Riley is open about it. How much more of a rebuild can the 71-year-old Riley endure?
“I’m excited about another team, another build,” Riley mentioned to the Miami Sun Sentinel this September. “I’ve had thoughts the last couple of years of moving on, I woke up this morning I’m really excited.”
Erik Spoelstra’s energy, attention to detail and space-and-cut schemes poise Miami well for the modern NBA landscape. Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside are above-average starters at their positions, and can be scary in the pick-and-roll as a tandem. Yet both have supreme weaknesses that chide confidence in them as a leading tandem for the franchise. Dragic heavily favors his dominant hand and is a streaky outside shooter. Whiteside is not a go-to option offensively (despite his self-perception) and is a black hole with the ball, posting a NBA history-worst assist rate in 2015, and boasts 36 career assists and 200 turnovers in 140 games.
The young pieces around them are solid and certainly worthy of hope as role players. Justise Winslow leads that charge as an uber-versatile wing that can do a little bit of everything. Offensively he still doesn’t have a clear role. His three-point range must expand and consistency would go a long way for him. Tyler Johnson was the investment the Heat chose over Dwyane Wade in the backcourt, and he’s a solidly well-rounded combo guard. It remains to be seen if he can quarterback the second unit, or if he’s best utilized as a secondary playmaker. Josh Richardson impressed as a rookie and can be a good, reliable backup and scorer off the bench. It remains to be seen if Winslow possesses the offensive firepower to be a star on the wings, but he certainly has the alpha male composure to him.
Beyond those five pieces, this is a mix-and-match Miami squad. Dion Waiters and Derrick Williams are both up-and-down players who were once high draft picks. Despite a poor perception of his time in Oklahoma City, Waiters shot 36 percent from three last year and should see a slight uptick of usage in Miami this season. His defensive and mental struggles could hold him back. Last season in New York we saw Derrick Williams start to figure out how to be a consistent pro. According to basketball-reference his per36 minute stats were the best of his career — 18.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.9 assists on 50.6 percent shooting from two-point range.
Others expected to make contributions, like Wayne Ellington, Luke Babbitt, James Johnson or Willie Reed, are stopgap options and not long-term solutions. They each fit a positional need or a utility role on the Heat roster (shooting, forward athleticism, interior defense) and will put up average numbers for Miami. But going seven deep isn’t a recipe for success in today’s NBA. The season is long and one injury can tear down their chances at staying in the hunt in a competitive mid-tier of the Eastern Conference.
All these reclamation projects are indicative of the culture that Riley, Spoelstra and others within the organization believe they have built. Riley is not shy about taking chances on troubled individuals or erratic players struggling to find a welcoming environment. It shows with how the team has handled Hassan Whiteside, and their approach in signing guys like Waiters and Williams.
Can this type of culture truly exist in the absence of the great players that successfully created it? The gamble that the culture can permeate these enigmas doesn’t offer much reward. They almost certainly won’t win the East with this roster, stand to gain nothing from tanking since they don’t have a draft pick and the returns via the trade market are going to be minimal. This appears to be nothing more than Riley patching together enough talent and possibilities to convince people that the Heat aren’t completely in disarray.
It all goes back to Pat, the man in charge, demanding to be seen as in control. He’s made a calculated risk in the handling of the post-LeBron era that he can reassemble a championship squad simply by being an attractive destination. The team’s cap space is contingent on the fallout of the Bosh situation, and they just committed $44 million to Tyler Johnson before he logged 1,000 career minutes. Whiteside, Dragic and Winslow are great pieces. They may not be enough to build a contender around. The state of the Miami Heat is one of concern and uncertainty, despite the face Riley wears at all times.
Regardless of your view of Riley, he’s not clearly the good guy or the bad guy in any tale that’s told of him. He’s bolted franchises before, then pushed out those who preferred not to follow that path. He’s protected the health of his players despite the public pressures to let them play. And now he’s moving forward without looking back at the glory days. To understand the trajectory of this organization is to understand Pat Riley. Confident, shrewd, cerebral and brilliant. If anyone can pull the Heat out of the hole they’re in, it’s Riley. It’s just strange to see them in a hole that he dug.
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From The Coaches Seat
A few tidbits from around the league that all fans should know from the preseason, expect moving forward or be watching early in the season.
Joel Embiid, Trusting The Process a Little Too Much. This is the time where it’s necessary to calm down almost every Sixers fan salivating over Embiid’s role this preseason. His numbers are incredibly strong — 11.4 points and 6.0 rebounds in 14.7 minutes — but do not appear to be sustainable. Embiid boasts an incredibly high usage rate of 37.8, higher than last season’s league leader DeMarcus Cousins (35.2). He put up these numbers with Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel missing from preseason action, as well as the team’s primary shot creators in Ben Simmons and Jerryd Bayless. The usage rates will go down, and the more enduring numbers will hinder: 6.4 turnovers per 36 minutes, 0 assists in preseason play and lackluster shooting percentages (42.9 percent FG, 16.7 percent 3FG).
Denver’s Manimal Dilemma. A young team developing a core without a star player can only go so far. The Nuggets have a great crop of fresh faces, though none of them appear to have that superstar “it-factor” that will allow them to carry a team deep into the postseason. That has pushed the Nuggets and GM Tim Connelly to dangle their two best veteran assets, Danilo Gallinari and Kenneth Faried. Faried’s return would be much more meaningful, signed for the next three seasons and still on the right side of 30 before he hits the market again. The issue for the Nuggets is this: the more they showcase Faried for a trade, the more they stunt the growth of their future tandem of Nurkic and Jokic. A team desperate in need for a star might be stuck in the middling chambers of the NBA standings if they don’t pull off an impactful trade. For Michael Malone, the Nuggets must come out of the gate in the right way, and how he manages his frontcourt logjam is the most important rotational issue on his plate.
Milwaukee’s Amorphous Blob of a Roster. The Bucks might be the most difficult team to predict now that Khris Middleton is lost for the majority of the year and Tony Snell was brought in to replace him. Jason Kidd traded away the player once envisioned to be the reincarnation of himself to grab a streaky wing shooter and the Bucks’ only two-way player other than Giannis Antetokounmpo. With so many one-sided offensive players (Greg Monroe, Jabari Parker, Jason Terry, Michael Beasley, Mirza Teletovic) who cannot defend a single position reliably, and defenders that struggle to reliably space the floor (John Henson), Coach Kidd must figure out how to manage the balance between defending the interior and providing spacing to the team’s new project — Antetokounmpo at the point — so the Bucks find their way back into the postseason race. If the preseason is any indication, where Milwaukee is last in the league in points scored, Kidd will have his hands full with this year’s offense.
Rick Carlisle’s Next Miracle. For years, the NBA’s most under-appreciated coach has been Rick Carlisle for the constant over-achieving nature of his teams. He gets the most out of each player, and must find a way to right the ship for new Mavericks acquisition Harrison Barnes. Barnes has been worse than wretched, shooting an Antarctic-cold 23.5 percent from the field and 18.8 percent from three. The 6-foot-8 wing had a rough summer for the U.S. Olympic team and a poor NBA Finals as well, so this is far more than an overreaction based on a few weeks. Barnes is in Dallas for the foreseeable future, and if Carlisle plans to deliver on his attempt to get the Mavericks back in the playoffs for Dirk Nowitzki’s final years, the mental coaching of Barnes is a vital piece — he’s a necessary two-way player for their success.
New Coaches to Watch. A third of the league has a new voice on the sidelines, so there will be plenty of changes to watch in terms of playbooks, rotations and overall styles of play. Houston will be a joy to watch get up-and-down in the Mike D’Antoni system, yet must figure out how to defend the rim for a coach known for his history of porous defenses. Scott Brooks and Tom Thibodeau enter intriguing situations with young talent and lofty expectations, both of whom could make a surprise postseason push. Check back in the coming weeks to see breakdowns and subtle playbook changes in the schemes each new coach employs — there are plenty of moving parts in the NBA this year.
Speaking of new coaches, watch for the Grizzlies, who new coach David Fizdale has modernized the Grizzlies by allowing Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph to shoot threes! It’s amazing to watch their slow releases catapult away from distance when defenses dare them to shoot. Nobody stands to benefit from this more than Tony Allen, who has even more space to be an effective slasher and stay on the floor. I like these Fizdale Grizzlies (Fizzlies?)
The Knicks and Jeff Hornacek are an interesting marriage, and the early honeymoon period has been quite sexy indeed. Lots of backdoor sets from the triangle have allowed their bigs to feel more comfortable away from the basket, and created more driving lanes for Joakim Noah. Despite numerous injuries and a down year last season, Noah is still a step faster than most centers that defend him, and if he continues to be a willing scorer when attacking the basket, watch out for this Knicks starting group.
What is the deal with the Hawks court design? Are they still going with that strange dizzying look on the out of bounds portion of the court and thinking it looks cool? I won’t be watching a lot of Hawks home games this year…
Danny Ainge’s gamble on Terry Rozier appears to be paying off, and first-round pick Jaylen Brown looks like he’ll be pretty good some day. A Brown-Crowder tandem against smaller frontcourts, with Horford roaming the paint and an I.T.-Bradley backcourt could actually be fairly scary both in the open court and the half-court.
Sets of the Week
Warriors 13 Backscreen (Side Inbounds)
There’s really no good way to defend the Warriors when Durant, Curry and Thompson are together on the floor. Three explosive and world-class shooters like that make it impossible to pressure all three on the perimeter. Yet, defenses must find a way to show on any screening action to prevent them from getting free three point looks. Late in games and in inbound situations, defenses will creep up to prevent comfortable catches on the perimeter for any of these three shooters.
Steve Kerr was ready for that against the Blazers this preseason, and devised a set that forced the Blazers to choose between extending on all three shooters or leaving the rim completely unguarded.
Sideline out of bounds (SLOB) situation, with Durant-Iguodala teaming as the 3 and 4 in this lineup. Kerr puts big man David West on the ball-side block, where his defender must sit on his shoulder to prevent a direct-line inbound past into the post. On the far side, Curry starts on the block, Durant above the elbow and Thompson on the far wing. For Thompson, it’s a simple decoy cut towards the ball over the top of Durant, forcing his defender to trail.
As Curry raises for the backscreen on Durant, ask yourself what Curry’s defender C.J. McCollum should do. I still don’t have an answer… Curry is so dangerous setting back screens simply because he’s the one player you cannot leave. For those that would recommend a switch, you then have Maurice Harkless on Curry and Durant in the post with C.J. McCollum on him. Is that your desired situation?
Bulls 25 Elbow PNP
Everybody is wondering about how the Bulls will utilize their three ball-dominant guards that need spacing and the ball in their hands. Hoiberg has done a decent job juggling their minutes in lineups, and it appears that Dwyane Wade will have some time on his own at the close of the first and third quarters, with a hybrid small lineup of Mirotic-Portis at the 4 and 5, both of whom are strong jump shooters in the mid-range.
Hoiberg puts Wade and Portis in the middle of the court with shooters McDermott and Mirotic in the dead corners. As Wade comes off a down screen from Portis to catch the ball at the elbow, Portis will raise afterwards to set a ball screen for Wade to attack. Even with a non-shooting PG on the court in Spencer Dinwiddie (whose role will now be filled by Michael Carter-Williams), Wade is creative and strong enough to get to the rim.
As you see above, the Cavaliers try to run “ice” against this action — essentially trying to contain Wade to one half of the court — and they clog the lane behind the ice with Dinwiddie’s defender. By popping after recognizing the ice, Bobby Portis creates a wide open lane for Wade. If he can get momentum towards the basket, the read for him is simple: throwback to Portis if he’s doubled or kick to the shooter in the corner whose defender offers the most help. Having an ice action occur so close to the basket essentially makes the pick-and-pop a wide open shot nearly every time — expect Portis to make a living here with this group.
Lakers Flash-X Side Elevator
Luke Walton is making things happen in Los Angeles. This level of creativity on offense was missing under Byron Scott the past few years. With iso-heavy Kobe Bryant retired and willing passers all over the court, the Lakers should be able to have much better ball movement and player movement. The Lakers have three fairly good outside shooters on the floor, so the decoyed attention that D’Angelo Russell and Jordan Clarkson get is honest defense.
The movement of Mozgov’s defender is key to this action. As Plumlee slides into position when the ball moves to Clarkson, he puts himself out of position to help on any type of flare or elevator screen to the opposite wing. Young, who is adept at freeing himself from the physicality of his defender, sputters off to the vacant wing, knowing a Clarkson pass will meet him there. Mozgov sets a solid screen, and Plumlee is frozen staring at the ball. It’s not great defense, but this action works — Walton and the Golden State Warriors utilized it on numerous occasions last year.
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