South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
UCF falls short in AAC quarters
Will Heat make moves at trade deadline or make summer moot?
FORT WORTH, TEXAS — D.J. Jeffries came off the bench to score 17 points to lead Memphis to a 70-62 win over UCF in the American Athletic Conference Tournament quarterfinals Friday night.
The third-seeded Tigers will face No. 2 seed Houston on Saturday, a rematch of the regular-season finale won by Houston 67-64 on a half-court buzzer beater.
DeAndre Williams had
16 points and five assists for Memphis (16-7). His dunk with about three minutes left put the Tigers up 58-54 and UCF didn’t get closer than that the rest of the way.
Boogie Ellis added 12 points. Landers Nolley II had 9 points and 12 rebounds. Lester Quinones had a career-high 15 rebounds plus 7 points.
Darius Perry had 15 points for the Knights (11-12). Isaiah Adams added 13 points. Brandon Mahan had 11 points and six rebounds. Dre Fuller Jr. had a career-high
11 rebounds plus 7 points. Darin Green Jr. had only 3 points despite coming into the contest as the Knights’ second leading scorer at 12 points per game. He made 1 of 5 shots, all from behind the 3-point arc.
“Both teams put it all out there on the floor. I was proud of my guys’ effort. Their guys came up with some great plays late in the game. They won a hard-fought game. I’m disappointed we can’t continue to play,” UCF coach Johnny Dawkins said. “The effort was there; the energy was there. We just didn’t make all the plays we needed to make.”
Pat Riley played the rental market at last year’s trading deadline.
After an eightmonth lease, which included the new décor of an Eastern Conference cham- pionship banner,
Jae Crowder was gone.
That makes the March
25 NBA trade deadline particularly complex this year. Because this time around the tenure for rental tenants could be a matter of weeks.
As Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge noted on a recent radio appearance, with so many teams flush with cap space this offseason, obtaining a player on an expiring contract with Bird Rights (allowing a re-signing above the salary cap) will not necessarily mean an upper hand during free agency.
And that matters because parting with a long-term asset becomes all the more dangerous if a Victor Oladipo, Kyle Lowry or John Collins then walks out the door in July for nothing in exchange.
As Ainge explained on
98.5 The Sports Hub, this is an offseason when shortterm answers could lead to long-term voids.
“The free-agent money this year is huge,” he said, with the Heat, for example, poised to harness upwards of $28 million in cap space, depending on those retained.
“There may be more free-agent money than there’s been in maybe ever. And the free-agent list, most of the significant players have signed contract extensions leading into this summer.
“So the free-agent list is not hugely great or franchise-changing, which means a lot of players that are on the free-agent list — and there’s a lot of money out there — there’s more money than there are quality players.
“So there’s probably going to be a lot of money spent and overspent or on a lot of free agents. And so that makes it less likely to be able to re-sign players at a fair value.”
In some cases, the reality is of a short-term rental, say a move for expiring contracts such as San Antonio Spurs forwards LaMarcus Aldridge or Rudy Gay, Houston Rockets forward P.J. Tucker or Sacramento Kings forward Nemanja Bjelica. The future hardly would be a consideration with such older veterans.
But with others, give up a draft pick, a young talent or an emerging prospect, and you either could be left empty-handed, or have to pay above-market price — perhaps way above market price — to salvage such a deadline deal by reupping in free agency with the likes of a Lowry, Oladipo or Collins.
And that has to matter to a team like the Heat, which still owes two future firstround picks, including this year’s non-protected choice.
It’s one thing to spend on a Harrison Barnes, a Larry Nance Jr. or even a Nikola Vucevic, should you be so inclined, with the knowledge that the acquired player isn’t going anywhere, already locked into a long-term contract.
But this summer’s market is not the market when the Heat previously acquired the expiring contracts of Shaquille O’Neal and Goran Dragic with the confidence that reupping was just around the free-agent corner, as proved to be the case.
It didn’t happen with Crowder, despite the good will developed in last summer’s Disney bubble, and it could happen again this time around for different reasons.
In losing Crowder, the Heat concern was FOMO, the fear of missing out on an elite free agent on this summer’s market. Then Anthony Davis, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo reupped or extended, and the 2021 market, as Ainge noted, became depleted and diluted.
That well could change the approach in coming days.
Now there could be something to be said about locking in for the remainder of the Jimmy Butler era (his contract expires after 2022-23) with a known quantity, someone who could help Butler and Bam Adebayo with the heavy lifting.
And that means being especially careful about, during these intervening days ahead of the trade deadline, parting with a prime trade chip when something more enduring may become available.
The initial notion was a Crowder-type rental would make the most sense again, to preserve a run at at least something close to an A-list free agent.
So rent Gay, Tucker, Aldridge, Nemanja or a similar expiring contract in a trade?
Or could this summer’s reset actually arrive five days after the start of spring, on March 25, with something that endures through the start of next season?
Now or later has always been the question at the NBA trading deadline.
But the way it is setting up, the story this time around could be now or never.
IN THE LANE
LEONARD LESSONS: An avid gamer himself, Sacramento Kings guard De’Aaron Fox told The Athletic he long has been careful about his word choices while livestreaming.
It is a lesson learned, he said, well in advance of the anti-Semitic slur by Heat center Meyers Leonard in a similar gaming situation.“I’ll say this, especially playing Call of Duty,” Fox said,“I’ve been playing Call of Duty since I was 10 years old, probably shouldn’t have been playing, but I was playing, whatever. The trashtalking is much worse than what he said. Obviously, it’s a slur — I didn’t even know what it meant. Me and my fiancée were like, ‘Let’s look it up because I have no idea what this means.’ But after finding out it’s a slur and things like that, those lobbies get like that all the time, like all the time. But the streaming it, I don’t even know why he would say that.”
CASE MADE: Heat captain Udonis Haslem said there should be little doubt about a place in the Basketball Hall of Fame for Chris Bosh after his Big Three teammate was named a 2021 finalist this past week.“When people talk about the Big Three, they always name the first two guys,” Haslem said of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade,“and then they name Chris Bosh last. And I think those other two guys will tell you, if you know anything about our team, when he was in our locker room I think we all really felt like Chris Bosh was probably the most important piece of our puzzle. So I’m glad he’s getting the recognition that he deserves.”
Said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra,“I really thought CB should have been a first-ballot guy. And he’s such a key, arguably the most important, component of our teams because he allowed everybody else just to be who they were.”
FASHION STATEMENT: Speaking of Haslem, he offered his view on the “Trophy Gold” uniforms that the Heat debuted in Thursday’s victory over the Orlando and will wear two more time this coming week.“I like it,” he said. “I like it it’s something different. Been going down kind of different from the lane we’ve been following a little bit. I like that we’ll be switching up the colors. So I can play with that a little bit. I can do something with that.” He added, “And it’s a little more manly for me, too. I like it a little more manly. A little more tough guy-ish.” Asked if that comment was in regard to the team’s previous fuchsia Vice versions, Haslem simply said,“I said a little more manly, that’s all I said.” HUGE POOL: The Heat’s Duncan Robinson this past week was among
15 players added to what now is a
57-player pool for the 12-man U.S. entry for the Summer Olympics. Remaining from the original pool are the Heat’s Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Ultimately, with the Tokyo Games scheduled to begin days after the NBA Finals, it could come down to selecting players from teams that will be eliminated before July’s conference finals. Based on Butler’s workload that began with last summer’s July restart at Disney World, with only a two-month break following the 2019-20 season, the prudent play could be Butler, who turns 32 in September, bypassing another grueling summer. NUMBER
6 /11: Rank of Heat merchandise over the first half of the season at NBAStore.com (behind only the Lakers, Nets, Warriors, Celtics, 76ers) and rank of Jimmy Butler jersey sales over the same period (ahead of players such as Damian Lillard, Kawhi Leonard and Trae Young).