Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Heat decisions loom
Team will gauge bigger picture with a lot at stake
David Hyde: Can Pat Riley make free agent magic?
MIAMI — If status quo was the desire, Pat Riley could have the Miami Heat’s work in free agency completed by 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
With an estimated $35 million in salarycap space and repeated vows to make retention the priority, Riley’s opening salvo in the annual process could be as simple as finding a middle ground with James Johnson and Dion Waiters, agreeing to guarantee Wayne Ellington’s 2017-18 salary, retaining Luke Babbitt’s Bird Rights, and utilizing the $4.3 million mid-level exception on Willie Reed.
That would leave the Heat with the roster that went 30-11 over the second half of this past season, plus first-round pick Bam Adebayo.
“We have great respect,” Riley said, “for the two guys, three guys, four guys that we have that are free agents.”
But the Heat’s brain trust of Riley, coach Erik Spoelstra, General Manager Andy Elisburg, CEO Nick Arison and owner Micky Arison also have inquiring minds.
That’s why simplicity will take a back seat to the bigger picture, one that will include a meeting with Utah Jazz forward Gordon Hayward, who stands as the most likely major piece in free agency to shake free. And then a waiting game, with Hayward also scheduled for meetings with the
Boston Celtics and Jazz that will take his part of the equation into next week.
The difference this time around is a shorter signing moratorium, with signings allowed as of noon Thursday, in the wake of the negotiating period that begins at the turn of the clock Saturday. This will be nothing like the drawn out process that took nearly two weeks to complete with Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh in 2010.
“We hope,” Riley said, “we’ll have some information on that first night. It’s not like it was in 2010, when you had a moratorium and guys are flying all over the place, taking meetings. That was incredible, the itinerary we had and then number of players we flew around in 36 hours to see.
“Last year, a lot of the business was done quickly over the phone with a lot of these players.”
Actually, last year proved to be a mix of expedience and setback for the Heat. While Hassan Whiteside was re-signed within hours of the July 1 start of free agency, a Riley side trip to woo Kevin Durant turned into a holding pattern that eventually led to Dwyane Wade’s departure to his hometown Chicago Bulls.
Now the question becomes how long Johnson and Waiters will be willing to be put on hold.
“We have a plan,” Riley said. “We have a Plan A. And we have a Plan B. There’s no D,E, F or G. We feel good about the plan. You never know what’s going to happen in free agency.”
Because Johnson and Waiters have only one season of tenure with the Heat, they must be signed into the team’s salary-cap space. With Ellington, it likely comes down to carving out $6.3 million of that $35 million in cap space to guarantee his conditional contract, with the 3-point specialist otherwise likely to be claimed on waivers before the Heat could restructure.
With Babbitt, putting aside $1.5 million of cap space will allow the Heat then to re-sign him for a higher amount later in free agency because of the Bird Rights that accompanied him in last summer’s trade with the New Orleans Pelicans. As for Reed, the Heat’s lone salary-cap exception likely now will go elsewhere, with the Heat bolstering their power rotation with the drafting of Adebayo.
“We have great respect for what Dion and what James did, and Luke and obviously what Wayne did last year,” Riley said, “So, you know, we’re concerned but we’re also very confident when you go into this process.”
And it will be a process, because there is too much at stake to merely remain status quo. After a 41-41 season, the Heat recognize that more is needed, with the team’s 2018 first-round pick going to the Phoenix Suns unless it is among the first seven. In other words, 2017-18 is no time for the middle ground.
“We’ll attack it the way the Miami Heat typically does,” Spoelstra of what, starting with Hayward, figures to be an extensive and exhaustive effort, with little time to exhale.