Is the Miami Heat roster unbalanced? | Five on the Floor

Is the Miami Heat roster unbalanced? | 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. On Android, we recommend Spotify. Also, check out Five Reasons YouTube channel for all the latest content from around South Florida Sports. We’ve also got Off the Floor, that’s our Discord server, $2.99 per month. Click on the link here in the description. You’ll bypass the Apple Upcharge. You can cancel at any time. Access 10 different channels and our stage shows. It’s off the floor. Also, prize pick. Use the code five fiv. Put down your five bucks. Get 50 to play right away. Play WNBA, baseball, and more. Of course, NFL preseason’s on there and the NFL season coming up soon. So check it out. It’s prizepix.com. Use the code fi. And now today’s 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. Got our own van. Y’all seen the block. Stop with one hand and pack the trust. It’s 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. All right, welcome back to Five on the Floor. Here’s today’s floor plan. I’m Ethan Skolnick. You can follow me Ethan JC on Fiverr in sports. I got Brady Hawk. You can follow me at Brady Hawk 305. We are coming to you after a couple of heat transactions. One of which was trading Haywood Highmith and a second round pick to the Nets for nothing really because there there was a there’s a protected heavily protected pick uh that was sent back a second round pick. And then the signing of Drew Smith to the 14th roster spot. He gets a three-year contract guaranteed $7 million total. So essentially pretty close to a minimum uh over three years coming off of his second traumatic injury. Uh had the ACL tear and then the next season, last season had the Achilles tear and yet has rehabsed his way back in. Great journey for him. Uh and much credit to him everything that he’s been through to get to this position. But but Brady and I are going to go through what the roster looks like right now because uh it’s tilted and I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to tilt back before training camp. So let let’s go through it. Um, and again, we apologize to those who want us to be positionless, but this kind of speaks to a small team, honestly, other than, you know, three guys, uh, one of which I don’t really consider a big u, but it’s a small team. Uh, so let let’s go through it. The guards, Brady. Okay. So, we are expecting, uh, Mitchell, excuse me. Yeah. Well, no, let’s start here. We’re starting, we’re expecting Hero and Powell to start, right? Okay. Yeah. All right. So, Hero and Powell are starting. Let me try to jot this down here. Hero Powell are starting. DaVon is getting heavy minutes, right? Mhm. All right. Then after that, aren’t we assuming that Larson? How are we projecting Larson? Is he a guard? Is he What is he? He’s He’s guard, isn’t he? I guess wing. Yeah, like I would I would call Haimey more wing and Larson more guard, but yeah, 100%. I mean, I know you guys have tal touched on this already, but Larson, he he’s a he’s a gimme for the rotation now. I know we were pushing him as being like that eighth or ninth guy before. Like, no, he’s 100% in the strong rotational and fully healthy uh with this Haywood move specifically. So, call him a guard, call him whatever, but I think what we’re going to hint at later in this episode is that maybe we’re calling Tela a guard, but I don’t think he’s gonna be playing a lot of guard this season. Right. Right. That’s that’s that’s part of Okay. So, then who else is on the roster? So, let’s go through this. You’ve got Hero, you got Powell, you got Davian, you got Larson. Rosier is still on the roster. Mhm. Okay. You You add in Drew Smith. You’re adding Drew Smith. And I’m not even going to try the last name because Alice is giving me a hard time again. But you got Casper, right? Okay. So, all right. So, now we’re looking at you’ve got Hero Powell, DaVon Len, Rosier, Drew Smith, Hakatronis. I I did it again. Okay. I I’m sorry. All right. Anyway, and that is for you, Alex. But okay, now I know people are going to put like stars on three of these, right? Rosier, they don’t really want to play. Mhm. Drew is still coming back from injury. And the other is a rookie who struggled for good parts of summer league doesn’t appear quite ready. Okay. Am I missing someone here? for guards, I wouldn’t say. So, I think the other guys you would call wings. Uh, and like I said, I think even some of these guards that we’re talking about, like Fonteio is 67 and he’s somebody that was playing a little bit, I guess, of the two guard in Detroit. So, like I don’t know if you could put him in there. Uh, Haime’s 66 that it’s actually it’s funny because they actually call Jaime a guard on on ESPN when I’m looking at it, but I definitely wouldn’t call him a guard. No. Okay. So, the wing room then I guess so if we’re going to say those seven are the guard rooms. The wing room is Wiggins Hakez Fonteio. Yeah, right. Okay. Um Okay. So, let let me before we get to the the quoteunquote bigs, here’s another problem. Um who’s who’s guarding the best wings on the other team other than Wiggins? It’s DaVon. I mean, DaVon’s going to be guarding up way up. He’s going to be guarding up a little bit. No, I think he’s going to be kind of sticky with some of the guards, but I think that’s going to be the question. If you’re leaning in the So, here’s the issue. You’re leaning in the direction of Bam and Wear. So, in theory, Bam is going to be somebody that can guard a lot of your wings again, and they can lean in this direction that we’ve talked about a lot in the past where Bam’s guarding the perimeter and where is guarding the back end. But, I think what I I my big takeaway from looking at this roster and kind of coming away from this episode is going to be I don’t know if the like we’re fully focused on this bam wear thing going forward, but I think you’re going to less of bam and wear together with the way this roster is shaping out. Like they’re going to be in a place where yes, they’re going to play the first four minutes of the first half and the second half, but other than that, they’re going to have to stagger. I mean, there’s no other bigs on this roster that are going to play the five other than where Bam. So, you’re going to have to stagger a ton that uh yeah, you’re going to be big for about five minutes, but other than that, you’re going to be back to these small lineups. So, uh who’s going to be guarding the perimeter? It’s Wiggins, it’s Bam. Uh and then there’s the question it Pella, I think, too. Pella is going to be kind of there. That’s why I think he’s going to 100% be a rotation player and kind of replace the some of the things Haywood did is just because uh he’s he’s first of all, he’s had a killer off seasonason. I mean, the just all around the board the things he’s been able to do, he just had another big game. Uh, I just think he’s somebody that 100% could guard the perimeter. But the issue with him being a regular rotation player and being that like perimeter stopper on good players is he’s still kind of working around the thing where he’s has to limit his foul trouble. He’s he’s still trying to figure part of it out just because he’s a young player that if you’re relying on him to be a rotation player and throwing him out there on the wing on some of these top players, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities where he’s going to pick up a quick two or three fouls. Uh, so yeah, there there’s not a lot of perimeter wing depth defensively on this roster right now. And I think like there’s another guy that we could probably consider in the wings category is Kesha Johnson. Uh, yeah. But I I just don’t think he’s somebody that’s going to be getting regular rotation minutes or regular minutes in general. So, it’s the he’s not really on my list of like their wing defenders that’s going to be playing. Well, right. Okay. So, you look at their quoteunquote bigs room. I’m putting him there for now. I mean I it’s Bamware Yovic and Kashad Johnson. That’s it. I mean I I mean the two-way Golden but I don’t think he’s ready to play. They haven’t signed another one to this point. Um you know Kai Jones was somebody that they looked at. I I just when I look at this roster, what it looks like to me, and again, they’re still going to be trying to move Rosier or seeing what they can do there, and maybe they can maybe they can flatten out the rotation or or at least the roster a little bit more that way, but it just looks to me like Spo’s going to be putting together these small lineup concoctions again, right? I mean, that’s what you’re sort of saying. And I I I don’t know necessarily that that was what we wanted to see when they were getting bigger. They they don’t have they don’t have a ton of positional quoteunquote size. Um like yes, Bam and Wear if you’re playing them together, but like you said, it’s not going to happen a lot. Yoic doesn’t really play like a big even though he’s gotten a lot physically stronger. Wiggins, I guess he’s a traditional three. Uh Hakez kind of like you mentioned, Fonteio, although he’s he’s only going to play if he shoots well, I think. Uh, and then you know the guards, their guard room’s small. Um, Hero Powell is not a I mean Powell’s bigger than DaVon. DaVon’s six foot. Larson if he’s playing guard. Yes. But like we think he’s going to be playing more three. And you know Drew I mean Drew Drew is bigger than Dave taller than DaVon. But I mean again it’s nine and you know the rookie is taller. I’m keep saying the rookie. The rookie is taller also, but again, we don’t think he’s going to get a lot of opportunity to play, at least at first. So, they’re they’re they’re small again, aren’t they? And and the issue with being small and when you look at this roster, the thing that it tells you is that they better be able to score. like they they better be able to find some offenses just just some type of offense because this is I think they’re past the days of like th those early Jimmy build teams where it was they could grind their way through a regular season even if you know certain things weren’t going their way just because they had the defensive pieces, they had the defensive depth, they had like that part of it where now you’re looking at a team where we’ve been saying for the last three years they’re leaning offense, they’re leaning offense, they can find different ways to score, but now it’s like I mean they kind of have to if they even want to be in the place that they think they’re going to end up being in the Eastern Conference. Like it’s like the Hero P like before it was like okay well if Hero Rosir worked that would be like a nice add-on for this team. Like that that’ll change something. That was like when they first got Rosier. Now what I’m saying look at hero pow. I’m like well hero pal better work if they like because there’s no backup plan really. Like they have to be able to work. They have to be able to be like giant offensive pillars of this team. They’re going to need some of these young guys to really pop offensively. Like I don’t think it can be another season of the wear last season offensively or the yoitch last year offensively. Like they’re going to need, as we keep saying, the growth, the pop from some of their young guys. But like when you’re leaning small, like you have to be able to score. You have to be able to have like play either play fast, do something different. Like that that’s kind of the difference maker. So, uh I mean defensively is going to be the question. I mean maybe this is a good maybe this is a good thing in theory that like it forces them to figure out the offensive thing. Maybe like that’s the only positive spin I can maybe put on it. It’s like before it was like, okay, well, we have the defense, so like we we’re going to lean into this defensive lineup because I trust this more than whatever I’m going to throw out there offensively. They don’t have that option probably anymore in a lot of ways. So now it’s like, okay, well, we have to figure out this offensive thing if we want to win games. All right, on the other side is there’s one other positive from this. So, we’ll try to get into some of the positives of this particular roster construction because I I’m giving you a lot of the negatives at first, which is, you know, I I’m not a huge fan of the super small lineups. Uh, and then also, you know, I’m just I’m wondering who’s going to guard on the wings consistently. I that that’s that’s a thing in addition to the bigs. But there there are a couple of positives here. Get into those on the other side. We do want to mention our friend Lynette. She’ll well, she may try to find the positives in this. She’s she’s uh she’s a very critically thinking Heat fan. You can find her at 954-5818800. It’s 954-5818800. Also find her at insurancebylanette.com. Car insurance, life insurance, homeowners insurance, renters insurance. She can handle all of it for you from her Lauder Hill office. So check her out. Aggressive insurance agency insurancebyette.com. Again, that’s 954-5818800. Okay, so here’s the single biggest positive I can see from the way that this roster is structured. Spo has to play Yovic a lot. I I just because I look at this and I’m like there’s no other big options, right? You’re going to have foul trouble occasionally for wear bam. Um and I I just think I think I don’t think he has any choice. I mean, not that not that I think he’s resisting it as much anymore because I didn’t get that sense when he talked about him out in Vegas. And obviously Yoic has followed up on that uh with very strong performances for Serbia. So everything is moving the right direction. He’s healthy for now. But I as I look at this roster like the only way to to make their rosters somewhat big their lineup somewhat bigger is to play him right and not and not to size down and play Wiggins at the I mean if you’re going to play a lot of Wiggins or Hakez at the four, something like that. Okay, Sean’s turned this episode off a long time ago. Are you gonna play Wiggins or Hawkins at the four or something like that to play all these guards? I mean, you’re you’re just you’re tiny. Yeah, Yovic is the piece to definitely make these lineups bigger because even when you just mentioned Wiggins, like there’s there’s the times of the game where you go Wiggins, Yoic, Bam front court, and even Tyler and Powell in the back court and that’s a bigger lineup like generally like you could find different ways to do it, but I think it’s more so as a whole. I’m more so worried about the staggering part of it. like are you going to be able to lean into Bamware as much as I think they originally wanted to? And you mentioned Yovic, like yeah, he’s going to be the piece that they they’re forced to play more, but like they’re one sprained ankle away from him playing the five again. Like, and I just don’t think that’s something he definitely doesn’t want to do, and I don’t think the Heat want to lean into that either. It’s just not a good recipe. That’s not his position. That’s not something that uh they should ever lean into, especially defensively. So yeah, the other part of it other than Yoic I would say is like look I a big proponent of Haywood. I was a big fan of Haywood. I think I I just was a big part like fan of his game letting him play into the rotation. I think he was kind of one of the more underrated players in the team. With that said with the direction of this team and where they currently sit. I also don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world to kind of see a clear opportunity for somebody like Haimey. Uh yeah that to just see what just one last chance here to see like what he can become if there is like that extra step if there’s that recovery piece of what happened last year if he can kind of turn some things around and also I think as much as we said Pel would play I mean there there’s still some chances there where I think spo would lean into the guys that he really does trust like Haywood was one of those guys that he really did trust where you may see some a lot of nights where Pella doesn’t play and he’s on the back burner where now there that that’s not happening like you’re forced to play Pella there’s an opportunity where Haimey that there there’s a chance where he’s forced to play. I don’t know how, you know, some fans may feel about that considering what we saw last season, but there’s a chance for a back like an actual bounceback like what we could see there. So, when we’re talking about the we keep bringing up like the current version of this team, like I said before that this is like a a season like a bridge season. I mean, this is some things where you have to figure out a lot of players on your roster like who you’re going to value moving forward. Uh are you going to put time into certain young players, which ones you’re going to do? So, if this is going to be that type of season, I mean, you’re going to have to see like long periods of time of them actually playing. So, like as much as you you know what Haywood was bringing at that time, you know what certain guys this roster are bringing. So, now this is kind of going to be a season where you see some of the guys that you want to see different things from. So, Yoic is just Yovic really isn’t that for me. Yoic is just especially watching the things with Servia. I mean, I say it every time I watch him play, but I’m like I want that guy to play as much as possible. I want that guy to play in his specific role. I want that guy to have the ball in his hands. Like I just I I want them to prioritize that type of stuff just because of what we’re seeing. Uh and if look, that’s why it is key because if he is if Yoic is a key part of this season, if he is a key part of this this roster and he’s kind of closing games, he’s playing in the you’re never really going to be small because he’s just he’s a walking mismatch if he’s able to kind of handle and create the way that we expect him to be able to get to uh best case scenario. So like that that’s kind of I guess the key to it. And we have we don’t I feel like we just mention Wiggins names in a lot of these podcasts. Like I feel like we really don’t we’re not like talking enough about Wiggins on this roster of what he’s going to be. But look, he’s somebody that is also we know what he can do defensively. He could size up and do all that stuff. But he’s also somebody that’s a bigger wing. Uh and he’s kind of leads you into a space where you’re not a smaller team that they’ve been in the past when Jimmy was out and they sub in some of these smaller guys into the three spot. This isn’t that. So there’s opportunities I’d say to get bigger, but I just think when you look at the roster generally, like if there is an injury in the big man room, if there is like some like if there’s just certain things you could see, there’s certain lineups and specifically the guard room is smaller. Like there’s going to be a lot of three guard lineups this year, right? Like I mean that that list that we put in the guard category, like as much as people don’t want to hear it, I think Powell’s going to play a lot of three. Like there’s just certain things that you’re going to shift around that I think you’re going to see a lot of three guard lineups. And uh yeah, I mean that that’s kind of going to be the tough part and then just trying to figure out if you could play bam and wear for long pockets of time. Yeah, Pal and Larson uh going to be playing a lot of the three, the traditional three I think uh in those in those scenarios. You know, the other thing is Yeah, I think with Wiggins, the reason we do this is because I think we’ve kind of feel like we’ve seen his best. Whereas with Yovic, there’s this possibility. And the the thing I’ve liked the most about what I’ve seen of Yoic, and this popped in the highlights, is it’s not just the three-point shooting. had four three-pointers in the last game, went four of seven, but it’s also the the attacking and the the and the and the drawing contact, the decisiveness with which he’s doing it. Yeah, he is okay. The absolute X factor this season for them. And I and we talk about seeking if they don’t come up with an answer about him this season, uh that’s that’s a huge problem. they they they need and part of it is him staying healthy, but he is he’s the he’s the one guy I look at here and I’m like I know people are going to say where, but I I I just think Yoic is closer to to making a huge impact again if things break right here and I I I want to see them play him a lot. Okay, 30 to 35 minutes. Doesn’t have to start, but opportunities to close. Ball in his hands. Otherwise, like what is, you know, what is this about? This team’s not winning a championship. You’ve got an extension decision to make on this guy. And he has a skill set that nobody else on the team has or has had for a while. So, I I just think it’s something that they they need to do. And I I got the sense in Vegas that they are. I I I this is and I I also know and I know it’s been reported by others but there are some in the organization who are huge Yovic fans. Um and by the way Jimmy was too okay not just personally Jimmy was too. Everybody around Jimmy when I would talk of Hakez to people around Jimmy they would say is the guy even during Jaime’s you know rookie season they would say Yovic is the guy who has star potential. We’ll see. But I think they’ve got to lean into you know seeing what he is as much as possible. this season. All right, thanks Brady. Appreciate it. Um, we got a lot of guards on the Five Reason sports team, too. We’re a little bit we we need to we need to size up. Uh, check out our sponsors, insurancebyette.com. Prize picks, use the code FIV.

The Miami Heat — with the trade of Haywood Highsmith and the re-signing of Dru Smith — now have seven players on their 14-man standard roster who would be categorized as guards. Is the team too small? How will Erik Spoelstra use the pieces? Ethan Skolnick discusses with Brady Hawk.

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