FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — For those anticipating an offseason overhaul by the Miami Heat it could come down to a matter of sooner or later.
For the moment, Pat Riley and the Heat’s front office are working on a pair of distinct timetables.
For example, if the Heat want to put Goran Dragic or Andre Iguodala into play at their current pay grades, then decisions would have to be made before those Aug. 1 team-option deadlines.
Conversely, when it comes to potentially utilizing Duncan Robinson or Kendrick Nunn in sign-and-trade transactions, those machinations could not be made until after the Aug. 6 end of the annual NBA personnel moratorium.
During the current cap calendar, the Heat do not have a future first-round pick available for a trade. After the July 29 NBA draft, the Heat will be allowed to unlock their 2028 first-rounder.
Typically, most offseason deals happen after the league turns to the cap calendar for the following season, in this case in August for 2021-22.
But the draft also tends to be one of the busier trading periods, which this season will arrive with the Heat having only five players available to put into trades — Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Precious Achiuwa and KZ Okpala — with impending free agents not allowed to be included in deals.
Pick up the options on Dragic and Iguodala before the expiration of the current cap calendar and there is $34 million in salary to add to the mix. But once such a move is made, it effectively eliminates the Heat from the cap-space race.
And that is important, too, because, as Riley has previously acknowledged, if you at least have the threat of signing away a team’s free agent into cap space it then makes it easier to negotiate a sign-and-trade transaction more favorable to your own team.
But there also is a flip side, and danger, to the waiting game, because those you plan to court may leave you stranded at the altar, with the Heat left to lament previous what-could-have-beens with Kevin Durant and Gordon Hayward, among others.
The prelude to this past season, in fact, offered another example of placing hope ahead of haste.
In that case, as Riley and his front office waited to see if Giannis Antetokounmpo would re-up with the Milwaukee Bucks or enter 2021 free agency, the Heat limited their free-agency guarantees to a single season. Jae Crowder walked. Others who could have boosted the Heat bench balked at being offered only one-year deals.
So Moe Harkless and Avery Bradley it was.
And then Antetokounmpo reupped with the Bucks.
In was a moment when the long view clouded the immediate possibilities.
That doesn’t mean patience isn’t prudent. And it would have to be a matter of practicing patience if the ultimate goal at 601 Biscayne is to land a prime element of 2021 free agency, be it Kyle Lowry, Tim Hardaway Jr., Spencer Dinwiddie, Lonzo Ball or perhaps even Kawhi Leonard.
But if a deal is there to be made, and it can be made with the resources at hand before the turning of the cap calendar, then there also is something to be said about moving in on a player who otherwise could head elsewhere around the draft. Among those dealt in deals revolving around the 2020 draft were Dennis Schroder, Danny Green, Josh Richardson, Seth Curry, Luke Kannard, Landry Shamet and Bruce Brown.
Amid yet another unusual NBA calendar, when the Finals will be contested in July a season after they were contested in October, time shifting almost has become the league’s norm.
At the end of this month, that again will be the case.
With the Heat facing decisions about sooner or later.
