NBA Draft passes quietly for Riley, Heat
Miami has a tight salary-cap situation, which will limit its free-agent options.
As teams added players such as Luka Doncic (left), Heat boss Pat Riley tried to lower expectations.
A quiet draft night could turn into a quiet
MIAMI — summer for the Heat.
Even with all of the rumors swirling around the futures of LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard, team President Pat Riley tried to lower outside expectations for the offseason Thursday night and hinted
the team would not be involved in those discussions. It’s not because of a lack of interest in those bigname players. It’s because of a lack of money due to the Heat’s unenviable salary-cap situation.
“Aggressive summers are free-agent summers, are room summers, are summers when you know you have either cap space or tax space to be able to really pursue somebody,” Riley said.
This is definitely not one of those summers, as the Heat currently have 10 players under contract for 201819 who are due about $119 million (assuming Rodney McGruder’s $1.5 million salary is guaranteed by the June 29 deadline). That puts Miami way above the projected $101 million salary cap and very close to the projected $123 million luxury-tax line.
“We’re up against the tax. We all know what the accounting situation is with us,” Riley said. “So, when you’re a freeagent player like we have been since 2006, 2010. You go after Kevin Durant, it was a long shot and we always thought big. You go after (Gordon) Hayward, we’ve always thought big. As soon as it didn’t happen with Hayward, we went right to Plan B and I think that’s where we are. We look at this as maybe a two-year run. We’re a playoff team, we’re a playoff contender. How are we going to improve? It’s going to be from within or the possibility of some transaction that might happen. It’s not going to be easy.”
Even if the Heat just want to bring back their own impending free agents — Wayne Ellington, Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem — they will have some salary-cap maneuvering to do. The Heat have Ellington’s early Bird rights, which allows them to exceed the cap to pay him 175 percent of his 2017-18 salary of $6.27 million. That means Miami can offer Ellington a deal starting at $10.9 million, which is the max he can make with the Heat next season.
But with the Heat only about $4 million under the luxury-tax line, signing Ellington to a contract with a starting salary of $10.9 million and rounding out the rest of the roster would mean a luxury-tax bill of more than $10 million on top of Ellington’s salary if the rest of the team remains intact.
“There’s no doubt that we want to keep him,” Riley said of Ellington. “We’re going to try to find a way to do that. But we’re up against the tax. I think it you add up the numbers, you know what that means. But we’re going to do everything we can do to try to keep him. I know he would like to be here.”
Miami is also still waiting on Wade and Haslem, who are both still deciding whether to retire or return for their 16th NBA seasons. Re-signing Wade could require the Heat’s exception money — likely the $5.4 million taxpayer mid-level exception — and re-signing Haslem will likely require a $2.4 million minimum-salary contract.
All of that means bringing back Ellington, Wade and Haslem could cost the Heat $18 million in combined 201819 salaries, which would put them about $14 million above the tax line if other salary can’t be shed.
Miami will not go that far above the threshold for a roster that’s not considered a title contender. So one of two things will probably have to happen if Wade and Haslem decide to return: Either the Heat will have to let Ellington sign with another team in free agency (because Wade and Haslem will be back on the roster if they choose to) or the Heat will have to shed salary to make room for all three free agents.
Decisions over the past two years have helped put Miami in this position. Signing Dion Waiters, James Johnson, Kelly Olynyk and Josh Richardson to four-year deals that combined to cost them $200 million last summer, and investing $98 million in Hassan Whiteside and $50 million in Tyler Johnson the previous summer has left the Heat with very little wiggle room to make major changes to their roster.
“To answer your question, I think yes this could be — not a passive summer — but it might not be the kind of summer that you may think that something big can happen from that standpoint,” Riley said. “And I think that’s the same way for a lot of teams, I really do. A lot of those teams, (seeded) four through eight (in the playoffs), they may come back again next year with some minor adjustments and try to do a better job. That includes us.”