ASK IRA: Will Heat get creative with No. 10 pick? – Sun Sentinel (blog)
Q: The first nine picks will most likely draft according to their needs. Luckily all nine teams picking before us don’t need a talented defensive wing player (SG/SF) who can spread the floor, so we could end up with a better player than projected. Pat Riley could stay true to character and either trade the pick for a “proven” guy or simply bypass the best available talent at No. 10 for a four-year college kid, because those are the ones he deems “most ready to contribute.” We failed to “reinvent” last year and brought in nothing but “proven” guys who no longer can play at the level which their reputation has earned. But the talent a Top 10 pick brings would force our hand to do so. Is this the summer we do something different as far recruiting, drafting, trading, free-agent signing and building a roster goes? What do you think? What would you like to see be done? — Ben.
A: There’s a lot to chew on there. First, there are several teams picking ahead of the Heat who are looking for wings, so some of the options will be thinned out by the time the Heat select at No. 10, if they remain at that spot. I don’t think Riley will necessarily look for an older, more-mature player, basically because there really aren’t many in that range other than Frank Kaminsky. I do think they will draft for need, because everything they do now is for the moment, as the clock ticks on Dwyane Wade. As far as trade options, I do think the No. 10 can be packaged with a player/players on the roster to move up. But the Heat’s lack of future picks limits the creativity there, and I’m not sure Riley would want to yield multiple assets. I doubt the Heat would trade down, because there likely won’t be much to be gained with such a move. As far as the Heat doing something “different,” that would go against the Heat culture. Their approach is to attempt to do things one way and do it well. And that approach is living in the moment, which they thought they were doing last summer with Luol Deng, Josh McRoberts and Danny Granger.
Q: I just don’t see a scenario where the Heat move up or down in the first round. They don’t have the assets to move up, unless Hassan Whiteside is put into play. And while they could trade down in the first round, considering the Heat‘s track record with late first-round picks and the fact that first-round picks come with a guaranteed salary, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense. My money is on Pat Riley keeping the pick and drafting a rotation player (like the Caron Butler pick) or trading the pick along with some salary (Mario Chalmers or Chris Andersen) in exchange for a rotation player — David.
A: You sort of got to your own answer at the end. I think the pick plus someone who could be a rotation player elsewhere (Chalmers, Birdman, Shabazz Napier, Josh McRoberts) might yield more for the Heat than the draft. Otherwise, I think the salary requirements for the No. 10 pick are reasonable enough to make it prudent to stay in place. I can’t see the Heat putting Whiteside in any package that does not return one of the top two centers in the draft, either Karl-Anthony Towns or Jahlil Okafor.
Q: Will the NBA consider an easier draft-seeding process such as how the NFL does it and just scrap the lottery process altogether? — Rodny, Sarasota.
A: Actually, with the Knicks getting bounced down a couple of spots, I think the lottery served its purpose, which makes teams think twice about tanking, with no guaranteed results. The difference with the NFL is that there are so few games, the options for tanking are limited. In the NBA, as we’ve seen, teams can go into tank mode for months. Basically, the NBA needs a way from keeping teams from racing to the bottom.
Copyright © 2015, Sun Sentinel
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
