Health means green for Dion
A healthy Dion Waiters will result in a far healthier bank account this season for the Miami Heat guard.
As part of the maneuvering by the Heat to fit the contracts of Waiters, James Johnson, Kelly Olynyk and Wayne Ellington below the salary cap this offseason, the Heat moved some of their salaries to bonuses.
For Waiters, who missed 36 games last season due to injury, appearing in only 46, the goal for the coming season is straight forward, with reaching 70 providing a lucrative reward.
In revealing several bonuses for the coming season, ESPN on Tuesday reported that Waiters will receive a $1.1 million bonus if he appears in 70 or more of the Heat’s 82 games.
Because Waiters did not meet that threshold last season, it is listed as an “unlikely” bonus, despite reaching that total in the three previous seasons before he joined the Heat last summer on a one-year freeagent contract.
Reaching the threshold would lift Waiters’ 2017-18 salary from $11 million to $12.1 million.
Waiters has stressed conditioning this offseason, routinely posting videos of his sessions both in Miami and his hometown of Philadelphia.
The Heat tweaked Olynyk’s contract
with an “unlikely” bonus of $1 million should he play 1,700 or more minutes this season, a bonus that would lift his salary from $10.6 million to $11.6 million. Olynyk had not played more than last season’s 1,538 regularseason minutes with the Boston Celtics over his first four NBA years.
Olynyk’s threshold could come down to whether he plays ahead of first-round pick Bam Adebayo in Erik Spoelstra’s center rotation behind Hassan Whiteside. The bonus for Olynyk’s minutes could have been among the factors why Willie Reed, last season’s backup center, opted for a one-year free-agent contract instead with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Olynyk’s contract, according to ESPN, also includes a bonus for the playoffs, which he made last season with the Celtics, producing a breakout Game 7 against the Washington Wizards in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Boston and Olynyk then were eliminated by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals.
As for James Johnson, the bonuses, according to ESPN, include body-fat measurements or weighins, a typical approach by the team over the years, dating back to routine weighins for former Heat guard Tim Hardaway.
Johnson underwent a physical transformation last season and has emphasized that commitment during his offseason workouts.
Should the bonus thresholds be met by the players this season, they then would count fully against the Heat’s 2017-18 salary cap, with the team already expected to be operating above the cap by then.
The Heat’s lone remaining salary-cap mechanism beyond minimum salaries for the coming season is a $4.3 million mid-level exception.
The Heat have 18 players under contract, two shy of the offseason maximum.