Sherman-Jeter group wins OK to buy Marlins
Miami is comfortable with roster while its former hero joins Cavs.
The $1.2 billion deal to take over the baseball franchise from Jeffrey Loria will close Monday; MLB owner approval unanimous.
Dave George BOCA RATON — Dion Waiters was grinning as he met reporters at Miami Heat training camp Wednesday, and he kept it going through the entire five-minute session.
Not laughing. Not smirking. Just feeling fine about life in general, which seems to be where this franchise finds itself on the week that Dwyane Wade joins the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“How confident am I?” Waiters said in response to a question about being Miami’s closer in tight games. “I mean, I think you already know that.”
This is the same cool customer who nailed a 3-pointer with less than a second to play in a 105-102 win over Golden State at AmericanAirlines Arena in January.
Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green all played a lot that night, none less than 36 minutes. Still, Miami had just enough to get by, at least once, against the league’s best team.
Hustling through the early workouts of training camp at FAU Gym, these guys don’t behave as if anything at all is missing from their roster. That includes Wade, the alltime Heat hero.
He’s back with LeBron James now. And Miami’s counter-punching crew, the team that barely missed the playoffs last year with a 30-11 finishing rush? They’re back to business.
On Wednesday morning, for instance, as players gathered for the first of two practice sessions, reports that Wade had settled on a contract with the Cavs and soon would make it official caused none of the fuss that it did for some wounded Heat fans.
It wasn’t even a prime topic, according to Goran Dragic, who is coming off an MVP performance for a team that supposedly was as undermanned as the Heat are now. That would be Slovenia’s Eurobasket championship squad, the one with a single NBA player, the Dragon.
“I didn’t hear anything and I didn’t talk with anybody about D-Wade,” Dragic said. “Of course, we talked about him in days before. We would love to have him here, but we respect his decision. It’s his right to do that. I wish him luck, not against us, though.
“It’s over, so we just want to be focused on the players that we have here in training camp now.”
They’re the guys you already know, led by the coach you already trust, Erik Spoelstra.
Gordon Hayward chose not to come aboard during the annual summertime blitz of free agency, choosing Boston over Miami and several other serious suitors. The Heat got Kelly Olynyk instead, a big man but not such a big deal. Ultimately Pat Riley wound up pouring lots of money over Waiters and James Johnson, and it seems now that it might have gone the same way even if Wade had been available a few months ago instead of by way of a mutual buyout agreement with Chicago on the eve of a new training camp.
It’s over, all right, the concept of Miami being nothing at all without Wade.
Even so, I’ll admit to moving on with reservations about Waiters as a focal point. He started just 43 games for Miami last season and got a $52 million contract based on the belief that he won’t make a habit of that. Are you ready to go all in like that with Waiters? Are you grinning like he is over the improvements expected in his game?
“There’s a lot of stuff you haven’t seen,” said Waiters, who averaged
15.8 points per game in his first Heat season. “I’m just trying to take my game to the next level.
“If teams focus on me, that’s fine. I love making plays for my teammates so it opens up everything. If they’re going to do that, and try to take the ball out of my hands, we’ve got guys on this team that can make a lot of plays. We’re determined. We’ve got something to prove.”
Wade was on a team with that mind-set way back when, in his rookie year. Miami barely finished above .500 but made it to the second round of the playoffs just the same. It was fun but Dwyane wants more these days. He wants a return to the NBA Finals.
Spo’s gang won’t get there this year, but they are going somewhere new, and they’re more than satisfied to be doing it together.
“We’ve got a team full of guys that know how to be ultra-competitive but still try to help each other,” Josh Richardson said. “Me and Tyler ( Johnson) got tangled up on the floor today and we just got up and slapped five and walked off.”
Got to pick your battles. The one for Wade, now two giant steps beyond his Miami glory days, was simply not worth fighting, and it’s not clear that this front office ever gave it much thought.