Nothing is guaranteed from Riley

President hopes, though, that free agents Jones, Leonard choose to return to team

There was a time during 2019-20 when Meyers Leonard was invaluable to the Miami Heat and Derrick Jones Jr. was essential. And then came the playoffs, when both fell out of the rotation.

Now the question is whether there is a Heat future for either.

“I love both of those players,” Heat President Pat Riley said during his season-ending media session Friday. “Meyers, I have not probably been around a player like him that is sincere with his enthusiasm for the game and his teammates and life. Plus, he’s a helluva player.

“He makes 3s, [has a] big body, sets the best picks in the league, started for us all year, and things changed in the bubble.”

After starting 49 times during the regular season, Leonard only started the two games in the playoffs that Bam Adebayo missed. Otherwise, he did not play in the league’s quarantine setting at Disney World during the postseason.

Jones, a rotation player most of the season, had games in the playoffs where he played mere seconds, if at all.

Part of it was Jones testing positive in June for coronavirus. Part of it was the Heat finally being able to integrate Andre Iguodala and Jae Crowder into their mix after the two were acquired at the February NBA trade deadline, just weeks before the NBA’s fourmonth pandemic shutdown. Both Crowder and Iguodala eventually were played by coach Erik Spoelstra ahead of Jones.

“I do believe what changed for Derrick was the addition of Andre and Jae midseason, and now Spo had 11, 12 guys that could play,” Riley said. “And I feel bad for Derrick, I really do. And I feel bad for Meyers.”

For either to return, it likely would mean accepting a one-year contract. And that might only become an option if prime Heat free agents Goran Dragic and Crowder return. Otherwise, Riley potentially could cast aside all of his free agents and maximize cap space for a single major signing.

“But they know they’re in a good organization,” Riley said of potentially inducing Leonard and Jones to return. “They went to the finals, and they got an opportunity.

“They are both free agents. We’re going to talk to them, obviously, like everybody else.”

Riley said he felt for both Leonard and Jones, as they were mostly reduced to observers during the postseason.

“But it’s not easy,” Riley said. “I think Spo did the best job that he could do in trying to manage the rotation. He found that what was best for the team in the playoffs was to go down, to go smaller.”

Neither, Leonard, a somewhat lumbering 7-footer, nor Jones, a rangy wing defender with a limited offensive skill set, fit into the smaller approach that allowed the Heat to thrive in the playoffs’ opening three rounds.

But Riley, long a proponent of bigger alignments, said the door should not be shut on bigger and beefier, based on what the Los Angeles Lakers’ lineups with Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard and Markieff Morris did against the Heat in the NBA Finals.

“Now, is that going to be something that will change in his philosophy in the future?” Riley asked. “When you take a look at the Lakers, they were big, they were massive, and I’m talking about their front line of Davis and Howard and [JaVale] McGee, Morris. These guys are big, big guys.

“We have good size with Bam, with Meyers and, also with Kelly [Olynyk]. So we’ll just see what happens.”

But what happened earlier this month was Leonard and Jones being phased out to the degree that their Heat futures appear, at best, murky.

“I agree that in the playoffs not starting or not playing the kind of minutes that you want, it wasn’t good for them,” Riley said. “But it’s what we had to do. It’s what Spo felt he had to do, and I think the players under

Meyers Leonard’s playoff place was on the bench. It’s uncertain whether the free-agent center has a future with the Heat.