Norman Powell: Welcome To Miami 🌴 Free Agency, Trades Shake Up Roster | July 8, 2025

Norman Powell: Welcome To Miami 🌴 Free Agency, Trades Shake Up Roster | July 8, 2025

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome back to After the Buzzer. I’m your host, Cooper Morehead, and we are in San Francisco at Summer League where news is breaking left, right, up, down, middle, news is everywhere. We’re on West Coast time, so I woke up, my phone was blowing up already, and I just knew we had to find some time, find a space to record, and we can talk about all the moves that are going on with the heat this off season. and we will go kind of sort of in chronological order to how things were going. And we’ll start with the resigning of DaVon Mitchell who is back with the Heat after coming over in the Jimmy Butler to Golden State deal was a multi-team deal. DaVon Mitchell ended up here after being in Toronto. And I mean he was an immediate fit. I think everybody could tell pretty much right away that he fit with the team. He fit with the franchise, the fan base. I I I haven’t seen many players endear themselves to fan bases quicker than Da’Von Mitchell did with his defense and his shooting and just his general approach to the game. Um there’s really not a whole lot to break down about it because we’ve talked about DaVon plenty. We can just note that, you know, he shot nearly 45% from three in his stint with Miami last year. That’s not going to sustain. I don’t think any reasonable person would expect that that to sustain because even if he was Ray Allen, you know, or Steph Curry, that’s that number is still going to come down a little bit. That’s totally fine. That’s well within expectations because I think DaVon Mitchell was still a better shooter than his reputation coming into Miami. his his career numbers had already been trending up and he at the end of the season we had asked him about why you know the shooting had come surging back in or back or had just gone surging upward and he said it was a rhythm thing he felt comfortable he got the ball in his hands plenty so he was able to you know feel good with the ball um when he was taking both pull-up threes and catching shoots uh so I think you know there was a reputation that he had coming into the heat where teams would still go underneath on pick and rolls That’s going to change, I have a feeling, as things go on because I think the shooting, even if it’s not 45% real, it is real. He’s going to be a solid to good to great shooter somewhere in there, which means teams are going to have to respect him, which means they’re going to have to treat him with respect on pick and rolls, and that will unlock even more his driving game. And he was really great at getting the rim, putting rim pressure on for Miami during that stint. So, I think his game is just going to kind of all come together eventually. his defenses adjust his three-point shot. Obviously, defensively, he fits everything they want to do. So, there’s, you know, it’s kind of a no-brainer. Da’Von Mitchell fits with the Heat. He wants to be with the Heat. Get it done. Everybody got it done. We’re really happy to have him back. All right, so next up is the Duncan Robinson to Detroit trade. Duncan had used the early termination option in his contract. So, it ended up being a signing trade to the Pistons with Simone Fonteio coming back to Miami. And look, I just want to talk a little bit about Duncan first because it was always a pleasure to work with Duncan, to be around Duncan, to interview him. Always a nice guy, always willing to give time to the media. I don’t you won’t find a single person around the team or in the media who has a negative thing to say about him. He’s just that kind of a person. So, first things first, we will miss Duncan the person and you know he he was a success story for the Heat. We’ve their developmental program is vaunted these days. I think there’s story after story after story of guys coming in undrafted like Duncan was and building careers through Miami’s developmental program. But I want to make clear that even though the developmental program is great, th those guys know what they what they’re doing. Duncan also deserves the bulk of the credit. The developmental program is, you know, it guides guys in the right direction, but Duncan comes in. He worked every day. He put up thousands and thousands and thousands of threes when nobody was looking. He deserves the credit for turning his career into something that, you know, is now the kind of guy other teams want as as seen by this trade. So, the Heat are losing a really great shooter, one of the probably one of the great best shooters not only in the league, maybe of all time. He has seasons, multiple seasons that stack up to just about anybody in the league other than Steph Curry. And when you’re doing that for multiple seasons, you know, sometimes in a row, sometimes three out of four. You can’t really bring those down. Those are just incredible numbers. And Duncan wasn’t just great off the catch. He was a great movement shooter. He had great chemistry with Bam Adabio. So, we’ll miss him as a person. We’ll miss him as a player for what he could do on the court as well. And in return, the heat get Fonteo who had some 20-point games against the Heat in the past. He’s 68 forward, good shooter. He’s he’s still kind of earning his sea legs in the league. He was in in Detroit’s rotation a little bit. So, he’s a player. He can shoot. He’s got some skill. We’ll see how Eric Spolster ends up wanting to use him, but he’s certainly the kind of a guy on your roster who whether he’s in the rotation or not, he can be ready to play and with his shooting can pretty much complement any lineup that he’s going to be in, especially at his size. Last thing is the trade that kind of surprised everybody a bit because it hadn’t been talked about at all. just showed up on everybody’s phone as an alert and that is Norm Powell coming from the LA Clippers to Miami in exchange for in a multi-team deal. But as far as the heat parts are Kevin Love and Kyle Anderson going out, Kyle, you know, I know I’m saying the same thing about all these guys, but they’re all really great guys. We all loved having them around. Kyle we only knew in Miami for a few months. It was great to get to know him. Kevin was uh a huge huge part of that NBA Finals run that ended in Denver. His leadership, you know, the lead us Kevin was a big thing back with that locker room especially. He had a voice that mattered. He had his outlet passes transformed Miami’s offense during that playoff run. His shooting, their ability to play, you know, five out with him as well. He was such a huge part of that run and he was a huge part of the locker room. So Kevin will be missed. We hope we wish the best to both him and Kyle of course. And in return, Miami is getting Norm Pal who might be one of the 10 best shooters in the league as well. You know the heat are losing a shooter in Duncan and they get an incredible incredible shooter in Norm Powell who is a professional scorer. He scored over 20 points a game last season. He’s been a six-man for much of his career, so Spoke will kind of have have the option if he wants to start him or bring him off the bench. Powell seems like the kind of a guy who’s amenable to just about anything. But man, his shooting is he is a great a great shooter. The number that I’ll just tell you is he scored 1.16 points per shot last season. And that was number 11 among the 57 players who um who took at least a thousand shots. So he is in the upper echel echelon of efficient shooters. That means he can shoot threes off the dribble, can shoot threes off the catch. He’s one of the best corner three shooters in the league. Eric Spolstra loves his corner threes. Norm is going to fit right in taking advantage of those spots, especially on those weak side catches. He will go on runs where he hits like eight, nine, 10 corner threes in a row across a couple games and you’ll think he’s never going to miss again. He’s a very good slasher, over a point per possession going to the rim, over a point per possession working the pick and roll. He’s a play finisher. Athleticism at the rim again in the mid-range. He’s got great touch and again the threes. He’s really just the kind of a scorer who fits on any team. You can plug him into any lineup on any team and he’s going to find a way to make things work. He’s that level of a score. So, the Heat have got themselves quite I don’t know even if to call him a luxury because he’s obviously going to be an important part of the team, but to get a guy like that onto a team that needs a little offensive juice and we’ve talked about they’ve been in the bottom 10 of the league in offense for a few years now, you know, Powell can really give them some juice and we’ll see where the offense goes from there. But Eric Spolster now has a new tool to see and work around. And you know, you got Tyler and you got Bam, you got Wiggins and Davon Mitchell and Kell Wear is one of the best lob targets in the league. And they’ve got all these fords who have skills and young guys who are learning and Powell. I think just with this shooting in general, forget about, you know, winning is obviously the most important thing to this franchise, but just put Winnie aside for a second. Powell has this kind of skill set to enable development to help development for all those young guys because he gives them space. He has gravity on the floor. He makes things easier for young guys to play and find their roles to find their place in the league because Powell is such an established and gifted score and shooter. So, that’s it’s a lot of news going on lately with the Heat. Maybe there’s more to come, but for now, we just want to make sure to touch on what has come down the pipeline as we’re hearing it in San Francisco. And hey, there’s a long summer ahead. We’ll see where things go. But until then, thank you for joining us. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you as always. I’m your host, Cooper Morhead. Thanks for joining on YouTube. Remember to subscribe to the channel if you can, and we’ll see you very soon. Take care.

🚨 AFTER THE BUZZER 🚨 HEAT Insider Couper Moorhead shares his key observations on the series of moves the HEAT have executed since Free Agency opened this past week, including Monday’s move to bring Norman Powell to Miami.

Questions for Coup about your favorite basketball team? Drop ’em in the comments below 💬

0:00 Introduction
0:30 Re-signing Davion Mitchell
2:51 Thank You, Duncan Robinson
4:53 Welcome, Simone Fontecchio
5:27 Monday’s Surprising Trade (Norman Powell To Miami)
9:00 How Powell Enables Development
9:27 In Conclusion…

Read Coup’s Notebook Vol. 95:
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