Who is Myron Gardner?: Meet the Miami Heat’s new 2-way | Five on the Floor

Who is Myron Gardner?: Meet the Miami Heat’s new 2-way | 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. And on Android, we recommend Spotify. Also check out the Five Reasons YouTube channel for content across the South Florida sports spectrum, including daily reports from Miami Dolphins Camp. If you want those, also check out Off the Floor. That’s our Discord server. Two bucks per month. Link right here in the description. Bypass the Apple Upcharge. Get access to 10 different channels including our state and plus our state shows. Not just including the most heat information and conversation. Also, check out prize picks. We tell you all the time, use the code five. Plenty to play there. WNBA, MLB, and more. MLB tends to be a little easier, I find. So, if you want to make some money, go to prizepix.com. Use the code five. FIVE. Put down your five. Get your 50. And now, today’s episode. Mercy luxurious heat nation. Yeah. Mercy logo down the Y on the floor ride for my dogs. Here’s a thing. You can check the score. Hustle hard. Couple stars. Check the floor plan. Got our own van. Y’all seen the block. Stop with one hand and Pat trust. It’s have the guts. We’re 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 Skolick. You can follow me Ethan Jolig and Five Reason Sports and I’ve got Digital Adele. You can follow me at Digital Adele. We’re both back from Las Vegas, both back in the humidity. And we’re going to talk about something that actually happened in Vegas that didn’t stay in Vegas. Now, you and I were incorrect about something. We said that there would be probably likely no more two-ways that came from that heat roster. We just didn’t have the right one necessarily. Um, let’s go to this first. Vladimir Golden has a two-way. He was on the roster. That two-way was given out before he got there. You get up to three two-ways and Drew Smith, we believe, is going to have one of the three, although he hasn’t officially been named to it or signed it yet. So, still rehabbing from injury, but the Heat have even put out videos of him in the facility. So, seems like he’s coming back. Obviously, he’s a favorite of Eric Spolers and was coming on especially on the defensive end, which is his forte and was shooting the ball pretty well before he got hurt last year, but that left a slot and we talked about some guys. We talked about Cook. Um, there were some others who by Stevenson, who I was not really a favorite of mine, uh, nor yours. Uh, but we didn’t talk a lot about Myron Gardner. So, we’re going to talk about him today because he got one of the two ways. Now, remember, just cuz you get a two-way now doesn’t mean you’re going to keep the two-way, but at least at the moment, he’s a player that the Heat decided to take a longer look at. Why? So, Myron Gardner is one of the players that we identified doesn’t stop the ball, though. So, that was one of the key things with his play. He’ll do all the hustle things. He’ll get on the boards. He averaged, you know, 4.5 rebounds per game in the uh Las Vegas 2K26 summer league, it’s called these days. and he got 2.5 steals per game. He was one of these guys that just did a little bit of everything. And he was a big live body, 66, 220 pounds, has some speed to him, can move. But the big thing for me is he doesn’t stop the ball. And that was the problem with Stevenson, Kyra Lewis, Cook, like they need to be on ball. They need a lot of usage. So, to me, the the the big skill aspect of it, that he has size and he’s skilled and he doesn’t stop the ball is why I think he got the ability to have that two-way. All right. So, we look at the Heat’s ability to develop rotation players and what they look for, which is typically find a skill that maybe others don’t have and then try to build the rest of it around it. So, you you said again, he doesn’t stop the ball. I mean, that’s that’s a positive, but that’s not necessarily a skill. Big body, not necessarily a skill. What is it? What is it he’s bringing? Is it is it going to be more on the defensive end? Is it It doesn’t I don’t think it’s necessarily as a shooter. And also, what what’s his background? Well, so Myron Gardner, he comes out of Utah. I mean, um Myron Gardner doesn’t come out of Utah. That’s the other guy, Madson. Uh Myron Gardner comes out of Little Rock, uh Arkansas. So he played basketball Little Rock, Arkansas for that type of basketball. I mean, as big as he is with the ability to handle the ball a little bit, shoot the ball, he was able to produce at that level. He ended up not making it with Orlando in 2023. He got 2024 he got cut uh by Orlando on in their summer league team, but it’s really because he doesn’t do anything spectacularly well. Now, for his size, he does shoot it in Las Vegas particularly well from three, 66% from deep at the Las Vegas Summer League. So, that is something that he can hang his hat on. It isn’t something you’re going to say right away that’s his forte, like you said, because in college he was in like the, you know, 35% range. So, maybe they can develop that at that size. If you can, that’s in the Haywood Highmith realm of things because he can defend and he can do so many other things. If they can really get that shot to be in that high30s, you know, 39%, then you then you’re cooking. Well, Haywood obviously has improved as a shooter at this level. Of course, he’s in the last year of his contract, too. Uh just changed his number from 24 to 8. Um believe he got a little scratch for that based on um conversation that I had with him at Miami ProLeague. Uh, make sure you check out ProLeague every Tuesday and Friday night. That’s in North Miami. Uh, look it up. You’ll see a lot of of NBA players there and some former ones like Assan Whiteside uh and Brandon Knight who show up from time to time. Um, okay. So, let’s get uh let’s get into this now in terms of what their two look like in general. So, they’ve added uh a big, which they need. The roster is light on bigs. Very light on bigs. Um, as light as it’s been, even if and if they start wear and and u bam together, they technically do not have a backup five signed to a standard contract. They just don’t. I mean, Yovic is going to play it, I guess. Or actually, Yoic, whoever whoever Yoic plays with will play it, I guess, probably, you know, and in the front court, but they don’t have it. So, so we expect Golden to get at least a look in training camp. Let’s start there. From what you saw, we talked about slow feet. He does compete. Um they tried him with wear in one of the games that you and I watched out there together. I wouldn’t do that again. Uh particularly had to chase out to the perimeter. But what do you think he gets minutes this year? Are they in trouble if he gets minutes this year? They are in trouble if he gets minutes this year. I mean he doesn’t have the athletic profile to block shots. He doesn’t rebound particularly well. I know seven rebounds per game isn’t terrible in college, but when you’re 7 foot tall, you’re expected 7 foot one and you you’re as strong as he is, you’re you’re expected to kind of dominate the glass. And he doesn’t really do that. He didn’t do it in summer league either. And so, it’s one of those things where unless he learns to take charges, he’s not he’s going to be a liability defensively for you. Uh but he does rebound. He does go after offensive uh boards. He does try hard. And I guess that’s something good for wear to practice against. So there is value in that. But if they do have to play him in minutes, yeah, they’re in trouble. All right, let’s get to the third two-way here and then the other side we’ll get to the player they’re inviting to training camp. Uh that that just came out today as if this is Saturday if you’re listening to this. So the third two-way at this point, I mean, you just give it to Drew Smith, right? You see how that works out. at least you know he can play at this level if he’s healthy enough and he’s the same guy because coming back from an Achilles injury are you going to be able to defend at that elite level that got you the the two-way and potential standard they were looking to give him in the first place because that’s the whole that’s the whole point. Yeah. If he can’t defend like that, his offense isn’t good enough to to keep him on the roster. I mean, it was passable, but it wasn’t anything that was going to keep him on the roster. Well, he doesn’t make mistakes, right? He he he would brings the ball up the court. He was spotting up and he was shooting at a at a pretty high level. The thing is, since he went out, they added DaVon Mitchell. So, now at that point, they needed him desperately because A, he wasn’t Terry, and B, they had no point of attack defense whatsoever, and Drew’s minutes were good. So, it was like, okay, give him more minutes. And I actually think he might have emerged as a starter as the season progressed uh just the direction that things were going. But then of course then DaVon came in. All right. I I’m I’m with you on it. I do think they’ll give him every shot just because they like him. I and they they like his mentality, what he brings. And I I think uh you know they I’m not going to say they guaranteed him. I’m not saying that. But I I think it was it was pretty well understood. You came back from the last injury. You you were better than you were before the injury. We’re going to give this one another shot. But Achilles and knee injuries are different things. Knee knee injury is catastrophic. Achilles injury sometimes is like career altering. That these days it’s not the same as when you tore the ACL back then when it was career altering. That’s not Achilles still can be. So that’s that’s one of the problems here. All right. On the other side, we’ll talk about another player that the Heat have invited to training camp as they’re filling out the back end of the roster. This none of this has the same pop as some of the guys they’ve brought in before. Like I remember, you know, when they brought in Caleb Martin and it wasn’t just cuz Jay Cole recommended, but it was like we watched him at the first scrimmage because they had an open scrimmage upstairs practice and Brady and I were like, “Wow, like he’s going to contribute like right away. Like he fits everything they do because you could just the athleticism jumped out, but also there was a feel for the game and other things that Caleb uh could do. I don’t know necessarily the back end of the roster has that kind of player this year, but um we’ll see. We do want to tell you about a new sponsor here at the Five Reason Sports Network. Obviously, if we want a sponsor, reach out to me on the Five Reason Sports DM. If you’ve been feeling tight in your hips, stiff in your spine, or like your body is just out of alignment, or you’re just old like me, listen up. The Aligned Training Method by Nanette is offering a free That’s free 30inut virtual movement assessment. And yes, it’s completely free. This isn’t some generic workout plan. You get a personal breakdown of your posture, hip function, and movement patterns. You can train smarter, avoid injury, and move better overall. It’s great for anyone working through pain, coming back from injury, or just looking to reset their body mechanics. Just head to the vault training. That’s the vaulttraining.online. The vaulttraining.online to book your session. This is where smarter movement begins. All right, let’s talk about the player that they’ve invited to camp now. So, you can invite 20 to camp total. Is that right? That’s still the rule. They haven’t changed that. Okay. I think you’re on you’re on mute, which is usually me. There you go. I believe you’re right. Who do they invite? Who Who do they invite to camp and what can we expect? Gabe Madson out of Utah. Uh he’s a guy that shoots the ball. Um he doesn’t necessarily shoot it as consistently as his form dictates he should. Uh because in his last season at Utah he shot 32% from three, but overall for the most part he had a season at 39% 37% and 38.6%. So he can shoot the ball and he gets the attempts up. He’s also there’s a theme developing here like you said Haywood is in the last year of his contract and Duncan Robinson got you know is now elsewhere he’s 66 200 lb just like my Gardner and he can shoot the ball he I believe in the Discord if you have not subscribed off the floor as Ethan said please do uh it was he’s averaged what 9.5 attempts were Golden State in summer league So, he’s not bashful about getting those attempts up, which you need if you’re trying to develop a movement shooter. You need to be able to have that kind of confidence. And it’s a skill in itself to take that many threes. Mhm. Well, we’ve talked about it. They didn’t really They were missing two things in their system, uh, a traditional big and a movement shooter. So, they’ve added one as a two-way in Golden. We’ll see how that works out. And now they’ve added a movement shooter. Um, and they’ve they’ve cycled through some of these guys in recent years. Uh, they really, again, they hit on Duncan, they hit on Strus, but everybody assumes that just cuz you hit on two guys that became, you know, eight figure a year players that you’re going to keep hitting on those guys. It’s not necessarily that easy to find, but they they are better at finding them than most. And again, you tap into one skill, you see where it goes. I mean, Cole Swder, they hit on a shooter. He just couldn’t do anything else. and he’s still shooting well at summer league, but I still don’t think he’s got a place in the NBA because I just he’s just got cement feet on defense and it makes it really difficult uh for him to compete. All right, a little bit more about those players as we go forward. I appreciate Adele jumping in here. We’ll try to give you more of these updates as we go. We are star for news obviously, so anything that happens like seriously like Norm Powell, I think he’s in France right now. Like we might just pod on that. Like we’ll do what whatever it is. I mean Tyler shaved his eyebrows although I think they’ve grown back. That was for a Nike shoot. I’m supposed to tell everybody that because he he wanted the world to know that. I know he reached out to he’s like, I didn’t do this for fashion reasons. Uh so we’re not going to do 20 minutes on Tyler’s eyebrows, but we may do it on something else. So we appreciate you joining us again. Uh check out the vault the that’s the vault training online do the vaultraining.online and also price picks use code five. Have a good one everybody.

The Miami Heat retained one of their summer league players — for now. Ethan Skolnick and Digital Adel introduce fans to Myron Gardner.

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