Heat not ‘actively pursuing’ trades
MIAMI — After all the preseason commotion involving the Miami Heat and Minnesota Timberwolves shooting guard Jimmy Butler, Heat President Pat Riley, speaking to reporters for the first time this season on Thursday, made it clear Miami is not active in trade talks at the moment.
“I’m not looking. I’m listening. [General manager] Andy [Elisburg] and I are, you know, we’re doing this all the time,” said Riley, taking a break from working on a Heat renovation project on the Miami home of James Sands, a 93-year-old Army veteran who served in World War II.
“We’re not actively pursuing anything. We’re listening, but you have to be part of what’s going on in the conversation in the NBA, and there’s a lot of hypotheticals from that standpoint.”
After the Heat and Timberwolves were reportedly close to a deal involving Butler and it fell apart, Riley made sure to address the team during the NBA’s opening week to let players know the organization was pulling the plug on negotiations.
“I think it was important,” Riley said. “It was about time. I let it go for about two weeks, but it was all over the board, and when things get out publicly like that and names start to hit, you’ve got to talk to them.
“I always talk to the agents first, but I thought at that time it was best just to sort of, ‘Let’s get the season started. We’re not going to do anything. We shut the thing down, and this is where we are with it.’ But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wouldn’t be listening.”
And Riley emphasized that that’s what it was on the Heat’s end – listening. He delved into what that trade-talk process is like.
“I never called anybody to ever make an offer, but there’s always conversations – probably more Andy than myself because he loves to talk,” Riley said. “So he has a brethren out there, and his brethren are great. He’s got 29, 30 GMs that they all like to talk, and so they need to talk to one another.”
Riley wants to improve the Heat, whether it comes from within or from the outside, and was candid in noting where the organization has been recent years.
“We were average,” he said. “Average is not bad. If you like to be average, that’s what we were last year and that’s what we’ve been for the last three years, so I think this team has a chance to go above that.
“I’ve discussed that with the team. They want to go above being average, which is maybe the bottom of the playoffs, and to get up there in the fourth, the fifth, the third spot. It’s going to be quite a challenge, but I think they have the ability to do that.
“We’ve got six guys that have been here for four years, and we’ve got the rest of the guys for at least three years. That’s more than enough time to get your act together, as a team. So there should not be any chemistry issues or continuity issues. … How much better they can get, I think, will be determined by how much work they want to put into it.”
Many look at the Heat’s roster and see a team that lacks a top-of-the-line, goto playmaker in his prime while having too many rotation-worthy players, which creates issues in in finding minutes for deserving players to get into a rhythm. Riley contests a team can never have too much depth.
“I say this to [coach Erik Spoelstra] all the time: ‘Don’t worry about the rotation. I guarantee you there will be four guys hurt every single night,’” Riley said. “There will be. Every roster, has three or four guys that are hurt.”
While the NBA has accelerated its pace significantly, which Riley admits he doesn’t like, he finds Heat center Hassan Whiteside’s play, the night after his 29-point, 20-rebound, nine-block performance against the Spurs, encouraging for a big man in today’s game.
“I think the media for the most part has gotten so caught up in this pace and space game that you automatically eliminate very talented, very athletic players by saying, ‘They can’t play in this game,’ “Riley said. “I think Spo realizes just how talented [Whiteside] is. And that as much as we want to stay contemporary, he can’t drink too much of the Kool-Aid because you’ll get drunk from it, and then trying to keep up and keep pace, you might keep your best player sitting on the bench.”