Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Top 10 best trades for the Miami Heat
MIAMI — The Miami Heat’s 30th trade deadline is fast approaching, with Feb. 8 the date that is circled this season.
At times, the trading deadline has meant blowing up the entire roster, as was the case when Pat Riley first seized control of the franchise in 1995-96.
At times, it has been more a factor of salary-cap and luxury-tax management, which led to the departure of Chris Andersen in 2016, with the Birdman forced to spread his wings elsewhere.
And sometimes, there has been silence, as was the case at last season’s deadline. The trade deadline, of course, merely is the end of the in-season trading period, with most of the Heat’s major transactions completed when the balls weren’t bouncing, when there was greater offseason time for assessment without having to worry about a game the next night.
Throughout this 30th-anniversary season, the South Florida Sun Sentinel will look back at three decades of the Heat, at the men and the moments that have made this an exhausting, exhilarating and enduring ride.
Today we look at the franchise’s Top 10 list of best all-time trades.
10. Goran Dragic
No, this Feb. 19, 2015, addition did not go in any way as planned, with the Heat learning of Chris Bosh’s blood clots the very day they were completing the trade with the Suns for arguably the franchise’s best point guard since Tim Hardaway. But with the loss of Bosh and the departure of Dwyane Wade, Dragic has stood as a rock of stability during a most unstable time for the franchise.
9. Jason Williams
To some, this was an ultimate head scratcher, bringing in almost the antithesis of a Pat Riley player, a sometimes overly creative passer with an itchy trigger finger. And yet the payoff from the Aug. 2, 2005, trade with the Grizzlies was the point guard who would help lead to the franchise’s first NBA championship 10 months later. White Chocolate was the fondue that helped stir a most unique championship pot.
8. Antoine Walker
Walker was another component of the Aug. 2, 2005, trade with the Grizzlies that left some wondering whether Pat Riley had gotten back pennies on the dollar in the trade that sent franchise mainstay Eddie Jones to the Grizzlies. But it was Walkers’ championship hunger that produced just that 10 months later, his tippy-toe jumper part of a wildly unexpected playoff run.
7. Anthony Mason
If you are noticing a theme here, it is how the Heat have turned what appeared to be headscratching trades into routine success stories. At best, Mason was considered a tack-on along with Eddie Jones to the Aug. 1, 2000, trade that sent Jamal Mashburn and P.J. Brown to the Hornets. Instead, Mason emerged as an AllStar Game starter and helped salvage a season that began with Alonzo Mourning sidelined by kidney illness.
6. Jamal Mashburn
Mashburn stands as arguably the most underappreciated player over the Heat’s 30 seasons, with his scoring, rebounding and playmaking. The cost going out in the Feb. 14, 1997, trade with the Mavericks was relatively scant: Sasha Danilovic, Martin Muursepp and injury-prone (at the time) Kurt Thomas. It was the arrival of Mashburn that helped make the Heat-Knicks playoff series so competitive.
5. Eddie Jones
While Alonzo Mourning, Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James often are viewed as franchise saviors, it was South Florida’s own Eddie Jones who helped hold things together during some of the leanest times, arriving in the Aug. 1, 2000, trade from the Hornets that sent out Jamal Mashburn and P.J. Brown. For five seasons, Jones stood as a scoring leader when there often wasn’t much more alongside.
4. Tim Hardaway
To say Pat Riley took a howitzer to his first trade deadline in charge of Heat personnel actually might be an understatement. The centerpiece to the mayhem of Feb. 22, 1996, was the trade of Bimbo Coles and Kevin Willis to the Warriors for Hardaway and Chris Gatling. It was from that moment that Riley had his initial 1-2 Heat punch of Alonzo Mourning and Hardaway, also the first two jerseys to be retired by the franchise.
3. Alonzo Mourning
If there was any doubt about Pat Riley going big upon his arrival as overseer of the next incarnation of the franchise it was put to rest on the eve of the 1995-96 season, when, on Nov. 3, 1995, he loaded up just about all of his tangible assets and sent Glen Rice, Matt Geiger, Khalid Reeves and a firstround draft choice to the Hornets for Mourning, Pete Myers and LeBron Ellis. Together, Riley and Mourning then would flex their way up the Eastern Conference standings.
2. Shaquille O’Neal
It can be argued that the Heat never in their 30 seasons paid as large a sum in a trade as what they sent to the Lakers on July 14, 2004, when they acquired Shaquille O’Neal at the cost of Caron Butler, Lamar Odom, Brian Grant and a first-round pick. The gambit resulted in instant contention and then the franchise’s first championship in 2006. Until that deal, the Heat, even with Dwyane Wade, were actually hanging curtains over seats at AmericanAirlines Arena amid diminished attendance.
1. Pat Riley
Because technically this was a trade, the Heat agreeing on Sept. 1, 1995, to send a first-round pick and $1 million to the Knicks for Riley, who had resigned as Knicks coach earlier in the year but remained contractually under control of the Knicks. Without Riley, it could be argued that none of the aforementioned trades on this list would have been consummated, his cult of personality weighing heavily in acquisitions such as Alonzo Mourning and Shaquille O’Neal.