Orlando drops summer league

Heat’s approach will be altered, Vegas remains

MIAMI – The Miami Heat’s summer-schooling approach will be altered, with the Orlando Magic no longer hosting their annual summer league.

The Heat in recent years have maximized their offseason exposure by participating in summer leagues in both Orlando and Las Vegas, one of few teams to devote nearly a month to such player development and evaluation.

The Orlando Sentinel reported Sunday that the Magic no longer will host a summer league, instead participating in the larger NBA-run summer league in Las Vegas.

Unless another team steps in with an offer to host such a weeklong evaluation event, it would leave the Heat to likely participate only in the Las Vegas league (the Utah Jazz host the NBA’s only other summer league, an event that had run concurrently with the Orlando league, ending at the start of the Las Vegas league the second week of July).

The Magic had held a summer league since 2002, with the unique approach of staging the games without public access, limiting attendance to team officials, international scouts and media.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said he does not foresee the Heat starting their own summer league, an event the team ran early in its 30-year history.

“We haven’t talked about that at all,” Spoelstra said. “I think the thought with the league is the Las Vegas summer league’s getting bigger. The majority of the teams go out there, like us. And you end up having close to two weeks of games there, anyway.

“So we’ll just try to maximize that, see if we can get some more games, and I don’t know if we’ll be able to match the amount of games we had by doing both, but, you know, there’s pros and cons . ... ”

Eight teams participated in the Orlando league last summer, compared to 24 in Las Vegas.

Derrick Walton

appearance for the Heat, playing at the end of the blowout road loss to the Warriors, and then played three games with the G League Sioux Falls Skyforce, the Heat’s developmental-league affiliate, where he averaged 15.3 points, 8.0 assists and 4.3 rebounds.