Olynyk the one who got away?

Thriving ex-Heat big man back Monday on birthday with Rockets

When the NBA released the schedule for the second half of the season, Kelly Olynyk found himself with a home game on his 30th birthday. Then, when the trade deadline arrived, Olynyk found out it would be a road game in the same venue.

Monday, when the Houston Rockets arrive for their lone visit of the season to AmericanAirlines Arena, they will arrive with Olynyk in opposing colors, after he and Avery Bradley were dealt by the Miami Heat on March 25 to the Rockets for Victor Oladipo.

“It’s a good opportunity,” Olynyk said of the reunion with the team he helped push to last season’s NBA Finals. “I’m looking forward to it, going to be back there, another opportunity to go out and play a basketball game in this league that we’re blessed to do.

“For me, I go out there and try to win a game. It is what it is, and we’ll see what happens.”

While Oladipo has mostly turned into a medical report for the Heat, as he deals with soreness in his right knee that has had him out since April 8, Olynyk has thrived with Houston, five times scoring 20 or more in his first 12 appearances with the Rockets, including 25 and 23 last week against the Indiana Pacers and Denver Nuggets, after scoring 20 or more only three times in his 43 appearances this season with the Heat.

What hasn’t accompanied the points have been wins, with the Rockets languishing at the bottom of the league.

But just as he did during the times he fell out of the rotation during his 3 ½ seasons with the Heat, the outside-shooting 6-foot-11 center has rolled with the punches, accepting his role as mentor to Houston’s younger players.

“It’s been good,” he said of third NBA stop. “It’s different for me coming from Boston and then Miami, just a different role. But it’s been a great opportunity for me to go out there and play and help these young guys and help this team in a different way than my role was in Miami.

“Just be someone these young guys can lean on and talk to and grow with. And for me, just go out there and try to help us and be a positive impact on the floor and on this team. And I’ve enjoyed it.”

Because of the uptick in his minutes, at more than 30 per game with the Rockets entering the weekend, Olynyk already has secured his annual $1 million bonus for playing time that was in the four-year, $50 million contract he signed with the Heat in the 2017 offseason.

Soon enough, he again will be back on the free-agent market this summer, ironically with the type of versatile bulk that the Heat have lacked in his absence.

The Rockets, in fact, have cast Olynyk alongside emerging big man Christian Wood, to help free Wood’s athleticism, just as the Heat did with success in the weeks before the trading deadline by starting Olynyk alongside Bam Adebayo.

“It allows us to have Christian kind of roll more and block shots and switch and do some different things,” Olynyk said, “so he doesn’t have to keep banging inside with big-body five men.”

The bond with the Rockets, Olynyk said, has eased the transition of stepping out of the Heat’s playoff race.

“Everybody’s been super welcoming,” he said. “And I’m blessed to play for my third franchise in this league.”

A silver lining is that Olynyk will be free to represent Canada in a last-chance Olympic qualifying tournament from June 29 to July 4 in Victoria, B.C., and then perhaps move on to the Tokyo Games, a year after going to the max in the postseason with the Heat.

As for Monday’s 30th birthday celebration, Olynyk said he is not sure about cake time, with the game coming on a second night of a back-to-back after Sunday’s game in Orlando.

“Probably not,” he said. “But we’ll see.”