Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Roster decisions come today as the second of two 10-day contracts for Okaro White expires.
Status of White, Williams determined today
MINNEAPOLIS — The move the Heat need to make by tonight’s game against the Timberwolves apparently won’t be made until today.
Both emerging forward Okaro White and seldomused forward Derrick Williams took flight with the team Sunday for Minneapolis, where the Heat will open a four-game trip with tonight’s game at the Target Center.
The Heat face multiple deadlines as the game against the ’Wolves approaches, with White’s second 10-day contract expiring Sunday and with the Heat’s roster exception for the injury absence of Josh Richardson poised to expire, with the guard again traveling after missing the past 13 games with a sprained left foot.
By rule, teams can sign a player to a maximum of two 10-day contracts, before having to either sign him for the balance of the season or release him, leaving him free to sign with any other team. Players signed to contracts other than 10-day deals cannot fill the space creased by a roster exception.
White has been a revelation for the Heat since being promoted from the team’s NBA Developmental League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce. The rookie forward out of Florida State has yet to experience an NBA defeat, on the roster for the entirety of the Heat’s 10-game winning streak.
“You can see why we like him,” Spoelstra said of White as the Heat turned their attention to this trip that also includes games against the Bucks, Nets and 76ers. “He’s a Miami Heat guy, a lot of intangibles, those winning plays that we keep on talking about.”
Because of the Heat’s position above the NBA salary cap, the team is limited to a two-year contract offer to White. A team below the salary cap can offer a three-year contract in such a situation.
Williams, who was signed in the offseason to a one-year, $4.6 million contract, has run the gamut during his Heat experience. He started 11 games, but also has gone extended periods without action. Prior to his 7:47 of mop-up duty in Saturday’s 125-102 rout of the Philadelphia 76ers, he had appeared in only one of the Heat’s previous nine games, for a total of 48 seconds.
The Heat can realize salary-cap relief if Williams is either traded or is waived and then claimed during the 48-hour period, perhaps by a team still below the NBA’s salary-cap floor.
Also traveling Sunday was forward Rodney McGruder, who was held out of the second half of Saturday’s victory, with White starting the second half against the 76ers in his place.
Silent streak
The thing that everybody else is talking about is the one thing that Spoelstra doesn’t want his team talking about.
Because even in the midst of this winning streak, the Heat also find themselves nine games under .500.
“You have to maintain perspective: Don’t believe the hype,” Spoelstra said, a phrase that has echoed through the Heat locker room. “We have still a lot of work to do. We still have to get another level or two or three. Whatever, we’re open to it.
“But we constantly say what we have to focus on is getting better, focus on our process every single day. You’re never as good as you think you are and never as bad as you think you are. We’ve made some improvement, but we still need to make some more.”
With Saturday’s victory over the 76ers, and with Saturday losses by the Hornets and Pistons, the Heat find themselves two games out of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, something that appeared an outrageous proposition when the team stood at 11-30.
“We are still not in the eighth spot,” guard Goran Dragic said. “We’re still not in the playoffs. So that doesn’t mean anything.”
It does, of course, actually mean plenty, because it means an unexpected playoff race.
“We just have a group of guys that love working through the losses and the wins,” forward James Johnson said. “We just love working. I think guys are more focused on bettering themselves just in case they get that opportunity.”
Rather than rest on their laurels, Dragic said the Heat had one of their “Hunger Games” practices after Wednesday’s victory over the Hawks extended the winning streak to nine.
Such intense work, guard Dion Waiters said, has prevented anything close to complacency.
“We go hard in practice, and once you go out there in the game, it’s easier,” Waiters said. “I think we have to continue to keep pushing one another, keep getting better and enjoy it.”