Miami Heat draft series: Uh oh, guards returning to school | Five on the Floor
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You get 50 to play right away. We’re going to be doing prize pick shows on every game of the NBA finals. Also the Stanley Cup finals. If you follow hockey, you can take some Panthers and put them with some Thunder players if you want. Check it out. It’s prize pickics. Use the code fi. Get your 50 bucks. Again, legal in the state of Florida. And now today’s [Music] episode. Mercy luxurious heat nation. Yeah. Down the [ __ ] Five on the floor. Ride for my dogs. Well, here’s a thing. You can check the score. Hustle hard. Couple stars. [Music] Got our own van. Y’all seen the block. Stop with one hand and pack the trust. It’s about having the guts. We here to bring the heat. Y’all can hang it up. Welcome to Five on the Floor, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Sander, Alex Toledo, Brady Hawk, and others from the Five Reason Sports Network. Also, make sure to subscribe to Off the Floor for the most heat anywhere. Welcome back to Five on the Floor. Here’s today’s floor plan. I’m Ethan Skolnick. You can follow me at Ethan Joling and Five Reasons Sports. I got Digital Adele. You can follow me at Digital Adele. Of course, you’ll find him on playback.tv/5rsn. We’ll be watching the finals games next week whether we want to or not. Uh, also you can check out the draft channel on Discord on off the floor. He’s there all the time. All right, we’re going through some draft topics as we go forward. We are now less than a month actually from the NBA draft. We’ll have full coverage of that. The Heat are having a draft party at the arena. There was some technical stuff that they had to deal with last year. uh this year they’re going to be there. So, we’ll be there, too. Um I probably will be in Florida this time instead of New York for the draft. So, it’ll probably be uh myself, Brady, and Alex. And then we’ll have our crew of thousands covering it. He’d have the 20th overall pick. That’s Golden State’s pick. They do not have their own pick. That would have been 15th. That one went to Oklahoma City because, yeah, they need more, right? They need more. It’s like, you know, fat kid gets fudge. All right. Um anyway, uh Adele, lots and lots and lots of fudge. Like all the fudge you ever want. All the fudge. All the fudge. Every every fudge store ever. Uh and the sprinkles and the the chocolate chips and the whole deal. Marshmallows, whipped cream. Anyway, I’m getting hungry. Um Adele, you have a uh concern you you addressed with me. It’s not nothing I did. Uh not this time. It’s it’s something that is happening here and it’s making this heat pick less valuable in your view. um tell us. Yeah, it’s making it less valuable and it’s kind of limiting the options and directions they could go. One of the biggest advantages of being in this 2025 draft was the fact that they could the Heat could go any way they wanted regardless of if they picked a 2015, you know, in that area. it wouldn’t have mattered because it was a very deep draft and it’s still a very deep draft except a lot of the guards went back to school and the facilitating playmaking style guards that they’re looking for. Um, Tahad Pedford went back to school. He went back to Auburn. Um, Boogie Fland went back to school. He was one of my favorites early in the process. Got injured. So, he went back to school to improve his stock. And then another guy that we talked about a little less so but was still in that conversation was Leber and Phylon. Him and Pedford matched up quite a bit. They went headto-head. Him and Jeremiah Fears matched up went headto-head. And I actually think Phylon early in the process was got the better uh of Jeremiah Fears uh for much of the season. And he’s a very versatile guard. already had a lot of size, but him going back to school, the options for a lead facilitating guard have dwindled significantly. Okay. Well, here’s one positive way to look at this because we always try to spin things positively is that the Heat um save the protections on their 2026 pick now, right? So, um so if they’re not very good this year, one of these players may develop into somebody that they want. Of course, that would be waiting a year. Um, and and this does tend to happen because whenever we talk about a draft being great, then if players are getting good advice, they’ll say, “Well, wait a year, get better, get into a slightly weaker draft class, of course, then that then improves the next draft class.” So, that’s kind of where we’re at. Now, you and I have talked about these kind of facilitating guards and what they need. Um, do you think that in light of this, and of course they could just trade the pick for somebody like Durant anyway, in which case we’re having this conversation for nothing, but do you think that this if the player like that could help them, which with the needs that they have, which are fairly apparent, if the player is not going to be there, do you see any scenario now where they just say, “F it. Let’s get out of the first round, straight down to the second round. Let’s save some money on the, you know, they’re trying to stay under the repeater. I know that. So, like, could you see that scenario now? I don’t really see a scenario where they trade back to be honest with you. It’s not something to heat do really and to go from 20 to 30 in this class. Maybe you could get like a Walter Clayton Jr., But do you really want to get a guy that isn’t going to really solve your point of attack defense? Another small guard. He can shoot the lights out, but he’s not going to really be that main guy. I don’t know about that. Personally, I think there are guys that would be there that would help solidify your roster longer term. You’d start looking at some of the bigs in my my opinion. So like say again we talk about this all the time like if a Thomas Sorber falls a Nick Clifford if he’s still there he’d help your wing offensively a lot even a Joan Bearinger or a Danny Wolf. So I think there’s going to be guys there they could take it 20 but it just swings your options to kind of lock you out of that facilitating guard market so to speak right. Um I mean could a Jagger Denman fall? I mean, he’s a big talent with a lot of limitations and in and in and watch outs in my book. Um, he’s projected to go earlier, but I could definitely see the guy the guy could slide. Um, so, right. So, what you say is this could shift them to a different position. Not that they were guaranteed to take a guard anyway, but again, looking at the roster now, some of the roster or what they do may be dictated on what the plans are. Excuse me, with Dave. Excuse me again. Um, I used to have a cough button at the radio station. I don’t have that here. I just would have to pause the podcast and that would take too much time. So, okay. Um, I mean, some of it may be dictated on Davian, but we know Davian’s not exactly what you’re talking about. like Davon is a point of attack defender. He improved as a playmaker. Clearly, he was a lottery pick and he improved as a shooter, but we’re talking about somebody who’s just going to juice their offense and right um and it doesn’t seem like a lot of those guys are there. We also did an episode about Shay and and about Hallebertton and their comps. And just for people who and I know you don’t like the word comps, but players that they could develop into, I get it. I this is a disclaimer. It’s like I can’t talk to Sean about positions. I can’t talk to Eternal about anything he’s wrong about. This is kind of where I’m at. Um, but you you did you did sort of say that Khan Caniple has similar metrics to what uh Hallebertton has and you said Trey Johnson has some metrics that remind you some ways of where where SGA was in college because both Hallebertton and SGA by the way went out of the top 10. They went 11th and 12th. One of the reasons I reference it but he picked 20th and we don’t think either of those two players Trey Johnson or Kanibles is going to get anywhere near 20. Um, but but I guess as we I just want to remind people of that because we just did that episode and if you want to listen to it, you can. There were there were some complaints about that episode and probably more about me than you that I was focusing on two guys that cannot get down to the Heat and we should have focused on guys who can. But kind of what you’re saying here is that some of the ones that we thought might won’t because they’re not even eligible in the draft anymore because they pulled themselves out. Uh it’s an interesting uh conversation and it gets back to this and I’ll go on the other side of this because it’s not just bigs is I’ve always felt you take best available player and now it feels like that may be where this ends up going but we will talk about that on the other side of this. We do want to mention a great sponsor the five reason sports network our friends over at real estate shop. You can find them at twops in the e-realestate shopfl.com thetilla realtor on Instagram as well. Amanda, Javier, huge Heat fans, family folks. They are business together, married couple. They know what your family needs for a house in Broward County. That’s basically the best I can put it. Whether you need to sell a house, get the most possible money, they will work really hard for you or if you’re trying to buy a house in what is a challenging market. We know that in South Florida dealing with interest rates, tariffs, all kinds of stuff’s going on with the economy. So, just reach out to two people who know they’ll be sympathetic to your concerns. And again, they won’t cheat you in any way. They’re going to work with you uh and get you the best deals possible on both ends of the spectrum. So, check them out. Real estatefl.com. That’s real estate shopfl.com. Two P’s in an E or the Fort Lauderdale realtor. All right. So, I’m a best player available person. Um you know, it’s it’s it’s why I was okay with them taking Dwayne Wade when they had Eddie Jones. Take the best player and you figure it out. Um, they obviously, you mentioned bigs, they could use a backup big. We’ve seen them cycle through so many backup bigs over the years. Uh, Kevin Love is not reliable as a player anymore. And Thomas Bryant is leading the Indiana Pacers to a championship. Dwayne Deadman has a massage gun somewhere. And Cody Zeller is playing the worst five minutes in NBA Finals history. So, I I understand the desire for I liked Cody. I just that was wow, that was hard to watch. I had to see it in person. Um, so I understand the need potentially for a backup big, but I’m just saying like if you’re not going to get the guard you want, you’re not going to trade up and you’re not going to trade down, then just take an athlete, right, to develop, right? Yeah. I think that’s absolutely the best way to go is you take the best player you can and even if he’s like a mable piece of clay like Joan Behringer from he’s an international player he’s a center as well but he’s 610 but he has this body type that reminds me a lot of how and not the player I’m not saying he’s the player but the body type of kind of how Giannis filled out his frame he has a frame like that I mean sounds good sounds really good, right? He doesn’t have the dexterity and handles, right? But he’s a different type of player, but he has that frame. And so there’s going to be a player like that. Even a Nolan Troy, he’s a little bit smaller of a guard. He’s 6’3, but he’s 175 pounds, but he’s a really good facilitator. His shot form is way better than his percentages say. He’s a good free throw shooter. Um, so I think there’s going to be guys there. There’s even going to be like older players. I think like Nick Clifford, he’s 23 years old. Isaiah Stevens, former teammate, um 66 wing, but he’s dynamic. Like his advance stats, when you look at his advanced stats, they’re really really good. He was the best rebounder in the country uh that was 66 in the entire college basketball. Like he was averaging almost 10 rebounds per game or something like that. So, right. And I’ve seen that name a lot lately. That that name keeps popping up for them. Um, are would you be concerned about taking a 23-y old rookie though? They they did this with Hawz. They have, but so like Nick Clifford because of the efficiency stuff and his ability to shoot the three at volume without Isaiah Stevens being there last season. I mean, he’s going to be a terrific defender for you. He’s going to be able dynamic in the open floor. Like, he’s really exceptionally fast in a straight line. He’s not like super lateral, like he doesn’t have a lot of shiftiness to his game, but in a straight line, that dude is fast fast. Like he’s elite fast. So like I think he’s going to have a role. And in today’s game, I was listening to a podcast where uh Austin Rivers was talking about how the game has changed to where you need wings that can make quick decisions. That’s that was an issue Hawz struggled with because he was a power forward in college. Handling and facilitating that decision-m is what you need. You need that and you need to be able to attack to close quickly and shoot the three. Nick Clifford does all those things. They’ve had an athlete deficit for a long time. Yes. Like like it’s why when they’ve had an athlete that’s jumped out um like Derrick Jones Jr. is an elite athlete. Um, but I mean he jumped out even more in Miami than he would anywhere else simply because they don’t have a lot of those. They haven’t had a lot of those. Um, you know, I’m going back to God I mean even all through the years like Riley has never prioritized that. Like I I go back to the uh the late 90s teams they had a guy named Mark Strickland who actually Strick’s a good dude. I still bump into him on occasion. um elite athlete struggle with some of the skill stuff. Uh but it was just like oh my god they have one like it’s just not like like Tim dragging his feet up the court uh you know at the stage of his career after you know his knees were shot um or Dan Marley like after knee surgeries and 12 other surgeries and then you just go through the years like even the Shaq way okay obviously Dwayne is an elite athlete although I always remember Dwayne laughing at me not the first or last time but I was asking him about Russell Westbrook once and I’m like does he remind you of you at all when you’re this is Russ was emerging. This was like, you know, he’s like, “Are you kidding me?” He’s like, “I want nothing like Russ,” you know? I mean, like, in other words, like he’s, of course, he did dunk on Vary and Germaine O’Neal and whatever. Like Dwayne had hops, but they they don’t they haven’t prioritized that. Jimmy wouldn’t be classified as elite as an athlete. He was elite as a worker, as a basketball IQ guy, that kind of thing. Bam has, you know, plus athleticism for his position. I don’t know that they’ve ever maximized it. Um they’ve never found anybody to throw him a decent lob. Uh right. He he doesn’t go he does he doesn’t go past people as much as he should. We he can do it. We see it and we’re like okay there you go. And then like then it’s a bunch of mid-range jumpers um after that. And then again you look at this roster like where’s the athleticism? Like and I’m talking about every obviously every basketball player is an athlete but I’m talking about but even Nico even Nico doesn’t have at least elite athleticism as a pro. Lson doesn’t. Larson doesn’t I mean I like I like his toughness. Uh where yes, but I I I’m but I’m confused about where because I don’t know when he puts on the weight if it’s going to look quite the same. I I’m curious to see how they h how they manage that as he he needs to get stronger clearly. But again, I’m looking at the rest of the roster. I mean, Wiggins was considered a lead athlete when he came in. I wouldn’t say now Heismith is not, Duncan is not it. I mean, Rosir is not. Tyler has maximized what God’s given him. Um Kashad Johnson, elite athlete. That’s the one, right? That they wouldn’t play him. They wouldn’t play him. Right. So I I just like they have to We talked about transition and someone threw this in my face today because I I did an episode with Gio where I was like, “Okay, can they fix the transition offense?” And I guess their points per possession in transition were top 10. I don’t know how. I don’t know if that was compared to the G-League, but because I I it’s I it’s hard to watch a lot of the time. Very very hard to watch. But But don’t they I mean, don’t they need I mean, I’m watching OKC and I’m like, okay, like there are legitimate athletes on the wing there. Uh and I just I just don’t I don’t I don’t see it with Miami. So, you’re saying the Clifford, are there others that would be like athlete projects? because I’m a little concerned about it in one regard because Pat, you know, had the scouting staff, you know, I know the scouting staff was not for this. Ky Akala, they traded three picks to move up or one pick and then they got a pick, traded two more picks to get Ky Akala and he just couldn’t play basketball, right? Um, so I I guess there’s a fine line here, but is there an athlete there that other than Clifford that you would say? Hugo Gonzalez, okay, didn’t he’s on a very good Real Madrid Madrid team. the whole team has XNBA players starting um but and he didn’t really get play much off the bench. He played like five minutes off the bench all season um in each game. He played one playoff game where they let him play for a half because they needed a spark. He played very very well. That guy’s very very athletic. He’s very very athletic. Six foot 207 pounds. He’s a great athlete. Uh Adu Thorough can’t shoot. So, I’m going to put that out there. Bull in a china shop, free throw merchant, but he’s also very, very athletic, dynamic defensively. Uh, he’ll do everything else for you but shoot, rebound, pass, take people off the dribble, attack to close, but he can’t shoot at all. But he’s an amazing athlete. Amazing athlete. Okay. So, so here’s one. Would you say Jamal Kane was is a plus NBA athlete? Yes. Okay. But it didn’t work. Right. Well, because yeah, he didn’t have the skill set in the processing ability because and that goes back to what Austin lose his mind with him a few times. And that was right. So, okay. So, I I guess that’s the thing like this is the fine line like if you have an elite athlete who’s going to drop to 20, it’s probably going to be some other ding against him right at that point, which is which is concern. I I just I just want to see them be a little more electrifying. I I want to see, you know, I because see I look at it this way and I maybe they don’t I don’t know. Okay. But shooting like they’re really good at getting guys to shoot better. Yes. like hey whether it’s Rob photo coming in or any of the like they know how to make guys whether it’s spoke creating opportunities analytically uh and in other ways or it’s just shooting form and tweaking things like and we saw with DaVon like and you know we’ll see if it holds but we saw they’re they’re really good at that. Um, but the the uh and Heismith like Heismith couldn’t shoot at all when he first came up, right? And now he’s a pretty reliable, you know, corner three-point shooter. Okay. And he also has some games where he’ll start to make some from the wings. He tends to be a rhythm player in that regard. But so it seems to me like if you have the athletic base more so than some of these guys that they’ve counted on before, they could teach them to shoot, couldn’t they? Isn’t that easier than doing the opposite? Like I mean in context of like a a weak side spot-up shooter. Yes. Right. Not like a lead I’m going to create my own offense type of thing. No. But yeah, you can definitely make them into like a weak side spot up shooter. Like because that’s kind of what happened with Jason Kid later in his career when he finally started shooting. It was up top 10 in three-point spanks. Like he couldn’t shoot at all when he got into not at all. He couldn’t like that was the joke. as kid because he has no Jay. Like that was the joke, right? Dude, was he did he in the top five? I think he might he might have been past. He climbed really high. Yeah. I don’t know the exact number. Um I mean, but but again, you’re talking about whatever people think of Jason Kidd, and I know there’s different opinions on Jason Kid, the human being, but I’m saying like as a as a a a you know, basketball IQ, that guy is like 90%, right? Okay. Like Nash is. Okay. There’s just a certain uh you know, they they just have it. they understand it and so he probably understood how to break down his own jumper work off of others and obviously we saw him win a championship with Dallas when he wasn’t even anywhere near the same player but he was contributing um at that stage I so I guess okay the overall thought of this episode is this and I wouldn’t want to depress people too much because the Heat tend to find good players regardless of where they draft but this pool that we were expecting where you were going to have like this flood of guards that they could choose between even though they don’t have 15 anymore but They have 20. I so I’ll f I’ll finish with this. Are they going to re I know it’s not a one forone comparison obviously because there were things that had to happen for them to give up the 15th pick and then they got the 20th pick for Jimmy. But are we going to be sitting there on dra? I know heat fans won’t distinguish all the things that went into that. Okay. So they’re just going to say well if we picked 15th instead of 20th we would have had this guy. Do you is there a player is there a guard you’re looking at that we’re going to say and I don’t know if OKC’s in keep even keeping the 15th pick that they don’t need any of these picks but let’s say that that we’re going to say somebody’s going to go at 15 or we’re going to say well if the Heat had 15 they could have gotten this guy but at 20 he wasn’t there anymore. I mean Jace Richardson could be that guy even though he’s a little bit of a smaller guard. Um I don’t see Casper Yakonis falling out of the top 10. Um, but yeah, I mean, Jace Richardson could be that type of guard because he was dynamic at Michigan State even though he’s 61. He’s got a 66 wingspan, that great athleticism, and his his advanced metrics are kind of off the charts as well. So, uh, he could end up being one of those types of guys. Um, you know, just want to know what they’re going to complain about, not the Heat. What are the fans going to complain about? But the one thing I’ll say about this draft though, Ethan, because I think there’s going to be a lot of trades on draft night, yeah, our board’s going to get flipped on its head depending on who trades out and who needs a center and all of this stuff. So, predicting who’s going to be there at number 15 is a tough one at this point. Got it. All right, Adele, we appreciate it. Uh, we’ll be back to depress people further in a variety of different ways. No, we’re going to get more upbeat as we head towards, you know, we’re going to start hope trafficking soon. I Greg Greg’s Greg’s uh Greg’s warming up. He’s in the bullpen. We’re going to hope traffic this thing. We got major. You know what? You see, we got a lefty and a righty in the pen. I don’t know who’s left-handed. Who’s right-handed? But we’re going to bring the two of them in. Make it about this situ. Greg’s a Yeah, lefty life. Right. Okay, there you go. We got a lefty of the pen. He’s he’s uh he’s he’s well, he and I have to do the BAM episode and he’s he’s ducking me anyway. No, he’s not, but he feels like it. All right, Digital Adele, we appreciate you. Um, thanks again. Also, check out price pick. Use the code 5 f real estate shop. Uh we’ll be doing more up. We’re going to do an NBA finals preview soon as we have a final the finals team. As we’re recording this, Indiana hasn’t closed out the Knicks yet. We’ll see if they do. Uh Brady and I are going to handle that because he knows about basketball and I don’t. Have a good one.
Digital Adel joins Ethan Skolnick again, this time to talk about many guards returning to college, and how that could affect the Miami Heat’s draft decisions.
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