Worst case scenarios for Miami Heat season (Part 2 of 2) | Five on the Floor

Worst case scenarios for Miami Heat season (Part 2 of 2) | Five on the Floor

Welcome to the latest episode of Five on the floor on the Five Reason Sports Network. Thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app on Apple. Recommend Apple podcast or Spotify on Android. We’re asking you to try us on Spotify. We know a lot of you get us on the Five Reasons YouTube channel. We appreciate our subscribers there as well, but we put out the content first on the podcast feed. So, if you want us right away, stream us off Spotify as well. And then if you want to watch us later because you think we’re so good-looking, you can do that later. Also check out, none of you think that. And also check out off the floor. Link is right there in the description. You’ll bypass the Apple Upcharge. You know the deal. The place for the most heat anywhere. Most heat information conversation. I’m telling you, by the time we get to October, if you’re not signed up here, you’re going to be like the only ones. That’s that’s that’s what I’m doing. 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You can check the score. Hustle hard. Couple stars. Bubble frog. Kept a plan. Got all y’all in the block. Stop with one hand and pap have 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. [Music] All right, I know Mercy listens to every episode. It’s time to work Norm Powell in there somewhere. Make slight adjustments here as we head towards training camp. So, he keeps saying he’s getting in the studio to do it. We’re asking to do it. All right, we are going to do uh the more depressing half of this episode series and I know we had a few in between. I’ve been bringing more people on the podcast lately, but I’ve got Greg Sander. You can follow me at Greg Sander. I’m Ethan Skolnick. You can follow me at Ethan Jolnick. Five reasons in sports. We’re going to look at worst case scenarios for this Miami Heat team. Now again, we’ve already done best case and I want to be clear on something because listening comprehension often not so great on off the floor. People are saying that I’m saying that the Heat are going to win 47 games. I didn’t do that. No, I said that was the highend for this team. The high end. It’s the best case scenario. Best case scenario if things break right. Okay. 47 wins. That’s that’s where I’m at with it. I think it’s possible, but a whole lot of internal development needs to go on. Powell and Hero need to really click. Bam needs to come out of the gate hot this time instead of sort of working up to it during the season. And they’re going to need a couple of these rotation players, whether it’s Larson, Yoic, uh you know, somebody to really take a step I or maybe it’s where, who knows? Um but they’re going to need a combination of these things to happen. These are best case scenarios. We’re going to do worst case scenario here. And I’m going to flip it a little bit. What is the worst case scenario for record is not necessarily the worst case scenario for their direction going forward. Like I could come up here and say, and we’re not doing this with injuries because obviously, look, if if Bam and Tyler get hurt, like yes, you cut 20 wins off the total, right? But it’s not that. I think the worst case scenario is for just enough to go right, but just enough to go wrong. and they’re the 10 seed with 36 wins. That to me is the worst case scenario. Am I wrong about that? Or do you think they could win fewer than that? Like if if there’s not serious injuries, they could be they could be under where they were last year, which is that 36 to 38 win space. This is a um that’s a tough question. Oh, there’s my Alex impression for the night. Um that’s right. And I bet there’s a few people out there that thought Ethan and I wouldn’t come back and do this episode of the worst case scenarios. So, also carriers doubters, we’re here. That’s right. We’re here. Um, I don’t know if that’s the worst case scenario, but it feels like to the fan base probably that there’s an element of this rut of being a playin team that that’s how it would resonate. Um I to your point like and uh for everybody who wanted them to have two picks in this last draft and however that works out and we’ll see how the how good those and impactful those prospects are. The Heat now at least control their draft pick next year in the event something catastrophic were to take place. That’s important I think moving forward. That’s why I don’t think that losing a lot of games is necessarily the worst case scenario because they do have their pick in what looks like again to be a good draft. Yeah. And it may be before a a really bad draft. I I I saw an article floating around that the 2027 class may be one of the worst. Um and they don’t have a first round pick in that draft currently, right? That’s the one they gave up for Rosier. Now I know that’s a long time away, but anyway, that’s a different pod. Um, so to your point though, I think you’re kind of right in that the worst case scenario would be like basically what they just did in the last year. Like kind of um show it show enough to make you think, gosh, there’s something in there, but 36 wins. Like we’ve been with these 36 37 win teams before. Like we’ve seen this show before. Um, and even some of those uh Dwayne seasons in between the Shaq exit and the big three like they those teams may have been higher end 40 win teams. I think most of them were maybe one of them did win 47 did it not? I think I thought so. Maybe the one that won 43 or 44. But yeah, so they’re they’re kind of in that range too, right? Like I I I kind of think that that is the absolute best case scenario. worst case is um being where you’ve been in the last few years. And unfortunately, like unless a lot of stuff breaks, right, you’re probably going to be floating around in that range. But we talked about it on the best case scenario pod. If they can just find a way, Ethan, I think this is going to be a huge win psychologically. If they can find a way to not be involved in the playin tournament, that will be a big step I feel like for this new Jimmy Butler era, whatever it becomes. I think that they got to get in out of the playin because that is kind of from the fans perspective. Uh, and I know that they try to make the tournament compelling. Um, it it is kind of like are we doing this again as a 10 seed? Right. Right. I mean they’re they’re great in the playin. I mean historically like Spolster is like undefeated in the playin. But I guess Greg if we follow on that it’s about more than record. It’s also about circumstance but it’s also about who contributes to the record. So to me the worst case scenario would be you get 36 37 wins and you’re the 10 seed but it’s on the backs of players who’ve done it before. So, let let’s let let me put it this way, okay? Let’s say that you get a another good season out of Bam. You get another all-star borderline all-star season out of Tyler, but good enough that he’s going to have he’s going to command a lot of money, but not good enough that it really takes you to another level, right? Wiggins, let’s say, is still on the roster playing really good some nights, not really good other nights. Then you’re again, you’re going into next year. I guess you’d be in the last year of his contract. Let’s say you get regression from DaVon. So now you’re no longer sure about that contract which looks very good at the time which to me still looks good and looked good at the time but you’re getting and then the combination of where Yovic Hawz Larson your core young group nobody pops. Yeah. Right. Okay. And and that’s that would be to me the worst case like these or like Terry has a resurgence and like that ends up leading it like you know like that would feel so 2017 Miami Heat for me you know like for that I don’t want it to be the only veterans that should be leading this team are the guys that we expect to be leading the group. Young veterans. Young veterans. Um and and Norm Pal who’s the oldest guy on the team. Well, okay. Okay. And and and let’s Oh, now Norm is going to the last year of his contract and you’re going to have a decision to make there. I I don’t think there’s really anything with Norm that could really go wrong because you didn’t give up anything to get him. And I, like I said, I don’t think he’s taking significant reps from players who needed to be put into that spot. I was more concerned about Kyle Anderson taking some of Yoic’s minutes than I am about Norm taking anybody’s minutes. At least with Norm, worst case scenario on that, he plays at a high enough level that it gives you leverage with Tyler’s contract. Like that’s I mean that there there’s nothing I don’t think that can really go and and even if he was to play his way out of what you can pay him. Okay, you didn’t give up anything. Oh, so that’s fine. You you got a year and and you know and I he the fans are going to get attached to him because the kind of person he is, but like it there’s it’s not the worst case scenario, but to me the the worst case is there’s there’s different ways to get to 36 to 38 wins. It’s like if you get to 36 to 38 wins, but you’ve got Yovic and H andor and andor Hake or Wear Andor Larson and these guys are making contributions, learning, getting better as the season progresses. Okay, if they’re doing what Hakez did last year and you have to be carried to the finish line by Tyler scoring, you know, taking a ridiculous number of shots and scoring, you know, 32 points, you know, down the stretch of games, then or or even say Wiggins doing some of that stuff. That’s not what you want this year. So, so I again, it’s not just a win total for me. It’s how they get to that win total. Well, and and to that point, they really have, if you look at the roster, removed, other than the starters, who if they’re going to be any good, that group needs to figure itself out, right, with Wiggins and and and Norm Pal. If we assume that those two go alongside Bam, Tyler, and Kel Wear, let’s just assume that for now, probably. Probably. But like most of the vets like the Kyle Andersons that were in the way or um I guess maybe you could say Drew Smith could end up getting if he’s back healthy, could he get in the way of Yakonis getting some minutes? Maybe. But I guess where I’m going here is as I look over the roster other than Terry Roier, there’s really not that many progress stoppers. So to your point, if you don’t see progress and it ends up in an uneven season where you have even more questions about like what you’re really building here, that I think philosophically also um it would kind of that’s a that’s a a a tough point for an organization that’s kind of uh hung their hat on developing guys and maximizing players. if Hakez and Yovic, if thing this point, Ethan, where they got to figure it out, Yoic in particular, because now you got to pay him. Um, but so it’s a pretty uh it’s an important season for a lot of the Heat’s homegrown talent that they’ve drafted. Well, we’ve been praising Adam Simon and his scouting crew, and I do think they’ve done well with with the picks that they’ve had, but yes, at some point, you got to have one of them like really really, you know, make you watch them as Sper says like that. That’s where we’re at. Okay. Now, where it’s in his second season, he’s young. We obviously had the little hiccup at summer. Bam. And Tyler, they did draft Bam and Tyler, too. They No, they did. I’m going almost back to it, you know, cuz they’re Bam and Tyler are pre-Jimmy, right? Like Bam was drafted in 17. Tyler was drafted, you know, a couple months before they acquired Jimmy. So that’s that’s or a month. So that’s that’s a little bit different. But I’m talking about since this build started, which is really when Jimmy came in, you know, they we we praised the Yoic pick because it was sort of forward thinking, out of the box for them, skilled player. We praise the Hz pick for a different reason. Ready to play right away. Burst on the scene, right? Seemed like he had the chops to be a scorer and maybe a little bit more. We praised the wear pick because again, they needed size. They needed a skilled big. Okay. Larson looks like a good second round selection. They don’t have a lot in terms of the undrafted pipeline right now that I’d liked as much as I’d liked in the past. Kisha Johnson had that good last game out there that I watched before I left Vegas, but I’m still curious what the role is there, even though I I think there’s an athletic profile that you can lean into. And then, you know, High Smith, you know, is still on the roster and is still going to contribute for them, but I don’t know that he’s long for their program at this point. They don’t have as many guys kind of in waiting. I didn’t like a lot of the undrafteds that I saw out there with them. They’re going to have to find some others. And then some of the ones they they invested some time in last year. Isaiah Stevens, Josh Christopher no longer with the organization anymore, right? Josh, you know, and so they don’t have as many guys kind of there, but they have more, you would think, higher upside guys because they were first and second round picks. And yes, you want to see the development, the role, you know, guys taking roles. Okay. Not, you know, because it’s funny because I asked Spo and on the other side, we’ll get to more of this, but I asked Spo, you know, out in Vegas about Yovic and finding a role for him. He said that’ll happen. and it was starting to happen. And part of my thinking now is that I’m overdoing this idea of them having to find a role for guys. No, you you want to be you want to be a factor in this league. Go carve out your role. Carve it out. Carve it out. Make make him watch you. Make him play you. Okay. That’s where they’re at with this. And I I think what’s the way where took that to heart in the last couple of games. Encourage because he could have gone the other way. Totally. It that it’s a positive development. We’ll see if it lasts until camp. All right. On the other side, excuse me, I have an external factor that could be a worst case scenario here. Um, we’re not trying to be too negative, but we, you know, we we had to do this. We did 40 minutes on the positive side. Uh, we don’t imagine another great sponsor. I don’t want to be negative here. Play prize pics. Use the code 5 fibbe. Put down your five bucks. Get your 50 to play right away. Prize picks the official sponsor of fantasy sponsor with the Five Reason Sports Network. Daily Fantasy Simplified. They’ve got all kinds of sports on there, all kinds of plays, all kinds of discounts. Taco Tuesday, Flex Friday, it’s all there and it is legal in the state of Florida. So, use the code 5 FIV. I guarantee you will find better possibilities here. I’ll just leave it there than that app that everybody’s using. Use the code 5 FIVE. Go to prize pickics.com. Here’s an external factor. Um, we know the balance of the power has shifted significantly west again. It’s been out there for a quarter century. This may be as lopsided as the conferences have ever been. Honestly, I think you could be looking at as many as 8 48 to 50 win teams. 48 50 win and above teams in the Western Conference if you just look on paper. Okay. Not in the East. Not in the East. I mean, there are teams in the West like if the Spurs were in the East, they’d be a top four seed right now. Okay. In the West, I don’t even know if they are going to get out of the playin. Okay, that’s where we are. Here would be my concern. There are some teams in recent years that have been stockpiling young talent. Two of them in particular, Detroit and Orlando, look like they’re ready to take that leap. Okay, they haven’t had that much playoff success. Orlando has added Bane. Uh Detroit has a legitimate superstar in waiting now. Like Cade Cunningham is that guy. It’s pretty clear. Okay. And now he’s gotten some playoff experience. They’ve got a couple of their young players who were hurt last year coming back. They’ve added Duncan, which I think is going to help some of the young players in space, but mostly it’s about the young talent that’s being assembled on some of these teams. And this young talent was drafted higher than the Heat’s young talent. And you know, I keep talking about leaning young, but other teams can lean young into guys that supposedly, at least the way they were drafted, have higher upsides. And if they’re starting to figure things out here, then it’s going to make it harder for the Heat to chase some of these teams down because we know it’s also harder to get the star, the experienced star to sort of fill out your roster or be your leading man. Do you are you worried about that with any of the teams in the east that the the Heat are going to kind of be you know they have some nice rotational young talent it looks like but they don’t have a cade they don’t have Apollo they don’t have that kind of highlevel star who’s honestly in those case some of them signed extensions but are not getting paid what the biggest stars in the league are getting paid. Yeah. and they’re particularly offensively gifted players. And I think like that’s the the the headlining offensive player is what I think Heat fans are looking for and to some degree a closer, right? Like th those are the things. Um, I guess for a year I I probably am uh concerned that they probably could get uh not only passed by Detroit and Orlando, who were ahead of them last year anyway, but like Atlanta really improved. I mean, we’re going to probably have to do uh a post-mortem on the off seasonason and kind of figure out where all the teams stand and look at their moves because I don’t think that I’ve done that holistically and looked at the conference. But just thinking about Atlanta, I think they’re going to be good with everybody who comes uh back healthy. Jaylen Johnson, um stuff like that. Um I Indiana, as much as you think, okay, they’re going to probably be really bad, sometimes they they’re one of those teams that doesn’t really tank, so they could be um in the mix. Uh, and so if you’re not if you’re in this 36 34 win territory, you run the risk of getting passed by a lot of these teams. But I think the heat will point to upcoming flexibility as an opportunity to revamp the entire thing to some degree. Um, and and that’ll be the selling point. And so it’s just really kind of a a shortterm concern. Um, I think the other thing, Ethan, that would make fans uh raise an eyebrow would be if the Heat are clearly not a contender and they’re careening toward a 35 win team season, is there anyone on the team that can be traded for an asset so that you have enough picks when the next superstar assets? Well, I just I just I just did I I’ll tease this a little bit. I I just did this pod with with Kate Carry. Many of you are familiar with Twitter. I think we’re going to actually run it after this one runs because we didn’t want to separate the best. I’m not going as far as him by too many times. No, but but the point he and I spoke about at the end was like I mean the Wiggins thing like that that is like you don’t want to come out of this season 36 wins, 10th seed playin and then still holding on to Wiggins. I know he’ll be going to the last year of his contract, but if that’s the case, it may be better to try to move him sooner and accumulate the assets sooner to give you more ammunition sooner um than to come out of the season and then okay, how are we going to trade him? I I I do think this though, it’s funny how the Norm Powell trade, which was I mean, nobody even the harshest critics of the Heat, okay, in the Twitter sphere or everywhere else, nobody can have a problem with that trade. Like there is just no argument against it. You traded you traded, you know, one guy who was great in the locker room and on Instagram and another guy, uh, you know, who in in slow-mo who I think we we liked his game, they liked his game, but we know that he was going to end up taking minutes from Yoic, which none of us wanted to see this season. And you gave up these two guys who really shouldn’t have been in the rotation this year, and Love’s case, were not going to be in the rotation this year. In Anderson’s case, probably not going to be in the rotation. And you got a guy who’s literally a 22-point score on high efficiency. Like I just don’t know how anybody could and the last year of his contract where you have flexibility to decide what to do. You can’t have any problem with it. And I I told you Pat was going to deliver his Mona Lisa. That that that’s it. Norm Paltry. No, I’m joking. It ain’t it ain’t a Mona Lisa, but it it it ain’t bad. Okay. It’s it’s not a Salvador Dolly either, but it it’s it’s it’s maybe it’s a burrito. Okay. It it’s it’s not it it’s pretty good. Okay. And it does the one thing, and I know we’re supposed to be more negative on this podcast, so I apologize for Hope Trafficking here. It does make you think that they still got it in there somewhere. They’re they they do still have the ability to kind of target the situation where a player is going to come free and capitalize. And we haven’t seen them do that really since Jimmy and and that’s so that’s why it was encouraging to me. They did it with Dragitch. Obviously Pat had done it with many others before. Go Zo Shack whatever. But like this was a trade where okay, you kind of saw what the Clippers were doing. You had to understand the Clippers mindset here to make this trade which was that they the Clippers obviously saw an opportunity with Beal potentially coming free at a cheaper price for them. They had some inside knowledge there because of a relationship. It’s clear Harden had a lot to do with Beiel coming. So this clear that there was a relationship that was there before and that the Clippers were essentially going to in their view they didn’t give up that much at that position by by losing Powell and they picked up they by getting Beal and they ended up picking up John Collins when they needed front court help. That is that’s the ability to see the whole league and jump in when something happens that I think we’ve wanted to see the Heat execute more. Yeah. and and that that is I know it’s supposed to be negative here, but that is something I’ve been taking away like okay that’s it’s not just that they pulled it off. It’s that they saw it coming obviously and that to me that’s promising. So, so I guess if we’re going to keep this as like worst case scenarios, it’s more of the same from the standings perspective, but also if we didn’t see uh degrees of forward thinking as we’re getting throughout the season because like Ethan, you and I, we do these shows daily and we knew going like I don’t know what month it was. It had to probably be December. Jimmy was was making the season a mess. that team was going nowhere. And so it’s like if we know it, everybody has to know it, right? And so I think that that’s kind of um an element of this is just understanding when to capitalize at the deadline, who you can move. Um and to your point though, you got to have players in the pipeline and your draft picks have to pay off. Like these are things now in the NBA, if you don’t get your draft picks right, you’re not going to be good. And so beyond Bam and Tyler, they need these guys to pop. And so there the worst case is that none of those guys pop and that uh you know we’re we’re looking at 35 wins. Yeah. I mean that the worst case like I said 35 36 wins and Tyler and Bam are carrying it you to it. That’s that’s the worst case. Like it if it’s 35 or 36 wins but like one of the other guys young guys is is contributing to that and really okay wait we have a potential star here. That’s different. But you don’t want that. And then you got to make a decision. Okay. Are we going to pay these two? Well, one of them they’ve already committed to, but are we going to pay these two guys $100 million to lead us back to 36 wins the next year? That’s what you don’t want. That’s what you don’t want. And uh again, I think Powell gives them some protection on that, some leverage on that. And it does make me feel a little better about them getting out of this rut because I mean that that move saved their off seasonason. I there’s no other way around it. Like I you can actually argue that I mean we’ll do a total grade on the offseason, but it it raised them two grades for me. Like for sure it really did like I mean you got a really good player and a good person who’s going to fit in their program and you g got some leverage with the hero contract and you really gave up nothing and again it speaks to kind of all right seeing around the league what’s going to happen and and can you pounce? Um but anyway we discussed some worst case, we discussed some best case. Uh uh next episode we’re gonna have uh I’m gonna have Harry on to uh talk about all the things they could have should have done, which I know is going to get me more text messages back than I’ve ever gotten before. All right, Greg, appreciate it. Thanks for our sponsors, real estate shopfl.com. Let them know we sent you, by the way. Prize picks, use the code fiv. Thank you for listening to the five on the floor on the five reason sports network. After all, someone needs to listen to my dad.

We gave you the best case. Now here’s the worst. Is it about record or how it happens? Ethan Skolnick and Greg Sylvander go doomsday for a change.

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