Winslow’s lost season not a total disaster
Progress over summer was positive, coach says.
BOSTON — Need a reminder of just how much room Justise Winslow has to grow as a basketball player? Winslow turned 21 on Sunday.
Winslow ’s second NBA season was cut short due to season-ending surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder in January. The last game he played was on Dec. 30 when he suffered the injury on the final play of the Heat’s 117-114 loss to the Celtics in Boston.
But coach Erik Spoelstra has enough perspective to realize that it hasn’t been a t o t a l l y l o s t s e a s o n f o r Winslow, who was taken with the 10th overall pick in the 2015 draft out of Duke.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be that dramatic either,” Spoelstra said Sunday when asked how hard it is for Winslow to miss this much time early in his career. “There’s nothing nice about it. We all feel horrible that he was injured.
“But he’s still has had a productive year of improvement, a summer of improvement, where he and ( Josh Richardson) were t wo of the top five players in the Orlando Summer League. His summer of improvement in August and September and the kind of preseason that he had.
“Going through all of that, I think is important for a young player. And even going through adversity, you can find a silver lining out of this even though it’s not ideal. It does develop character.”
Spoelstra said earlier this month that Winslow is ahead of schedule in his rehab from shoulder surgery, but reiterated that he will not return this season. The Heat are taking a cautious approach with Winslow, as Spoelstra said the organization is “playing the long game with him.”
With a wrist injury keeping him out of other games earlier in the season, Winslow played in 18 games in his second NBA season. He struggled offensively, averaging 10.9 points on 35.6 percent shooting from the field and 20 percent shooting from 3-point range.
There’s still plenty of time for Winslow to continue his growth on the basketball cour t , though. Spoelstra knows that.
“Just l ook at al l of our young players and how much they’ve improved and how quickly their improvement can happen,” Spoelstra said. “You don’t have to look any further than Hassan (Whiteside) in the last six weeks. He’s a much different player than he was at the beginning of the year. Josh Richardson in the last t wo weeks has really started to turn the corner. I like the improvement that he’s making. That’s why we don’t focus on the result. It’s improvement, development every single day.”
Early wake-up call: With less than three weeks remaining in the regular season, the Heat’s playoff chances hang in the balance.
But the importance of the next few weeks is not why Miami held a morning shootaround session before a 6 p.m. game for the first time this season and the first time in a long time on Sunday.
Instead, it was out of convenience.
The Heat’s team hotel in Boston included a gym with a basketball court. Miami usually holds a walkthrough before early Sunday games in its team hotel ballroom, but having a basketball court available at the hotel changed things.
Usually full shootarounds are not held before a game that tips off earlier than 7 p.m. because of the quick turnaround bet ween the shootaround and the contest.
“We normally do this in a ballroom, but we happened t o h ave t h i s , ” S p o e l s t r a said after Sunday morning’s shootaround.
Holding a walkthrough on a basketball court meant reporters were invited for interviews. When the Heat hold a walkthrough in a ballroom, media are not invited.
B u t a c c o rd i n g t o NBA rules, when a ball touches the court and the coaching staff is present, media availability is required.
Whether it was really out of convenience or not, adding a shootaround to the Sunday schedule allowed the Heat to change a routine that hasn’t produced positive results. Alas, following their 112-108 loss in Boston, the Heat are now 0-7 on Sundays, with six of those games starting at 6 p.m., and the other starting at 3:30 p.m.