Danny Ainge wants shot blocker, would be open to pleasing star target with other moves

Bob,

I also will be pretty happy when the Cs can find a shot blocker or two as well.

I realize that a team can lose a game in many ways on any given night, but the Cs certainly have lost their share of games when they have had a difficult time getting to the rim.

I could care less about the order that we obtain the horses as long as the barn has the necessary thoroughbreds needed to be a legitimate contender.

swish

He would have had Mickey too if they played him.

No to hibert and Timofey Mozgov (R u kidding me?)

dboss

from out here in the desert it seems Mickey got the headlines in Portland but never got a shot even though his talent is what appears to be sorely needed. What's up with that? Is he a project or an asset? Perhaps by the end summer league we will know more about whether he is part of the answer or not. One thing is sure, Danny isn't shy about misdirecting the fans and every one else so he gets what he wants and the team needs

we all need to remember that lots of guys tear up the d-league and never become NBA players.

Mickey MAY be an exception to that or he may have some limitation that never allows him to be more than an end of bench player.

Both Hunter (early) and Rozier (later) got rotation minutes this year, but not Mickey. That tells me the staff didn't think he was either ready or able to contribute.

time will tell, but I am not getting my hopes up that the 6-8 Mickey will become that rim protector many of us desire.

How much money can Miami offer to Hassan Whiteside? He would be a good option for us.

Miami has no salary cap issues next year. They will have at least $40m in cap space. They only have 3 players making over $3m next season. Bosh, Dragic and McRoberts.
Miami can offer Whiteside the same as every other team. A 4 year contract starting at about $21m per year.

I disagree that Whiteside doesn't leave the paint. He is an excellent pick and roll defender who comes out as far as he needs to. His length and quickness in recovering on guards driving to the basket is probably the best out of any center in the league.

The salary cap picture will be cloudy until they decide on the future of Deng and Wade.


swish

I would love to get Whiteside, he gets our defense to the next level, however I can't imagine Riley not figuring out a way to keep him in Miami, you don't let pieces like that go, betcha Danny didn't think it would be this hard to get a real center since he did the Perk- Jeff Green fiasco....if worse comes to worse, we could draft a Thon Maker, AJ Hammons or Diamond Stone, and maybe we get lucky and they turn out to be real players.

tjmakz.
Maybe I am wrong ,but I don't think Miami can offer the same max contract as the other teams.With him having a 800,000 contract I think is limited in the amount of money to offer him.Is something about %,maybe Gyso can help us with this.Is not clear to me.

international wrote:tjmakz.
Maybe I am wrong ,but I don't think Miami can offer the same max contract as the other teams.With him having a 800,000 contract I think is limited in the amount of money to offer him.Is something about %,maybe Gyso can help us with this.Is not clear to me.

http://heatdiehards.sportsblog.com/posts/9890895/what-hassan-whiteside-s-max-salary-could-look-like.html

The Heat can offer the same contract as other teams but will have to do so with cap space.
4 years starting at approx $20.4m per year.

It's funny (in an odd way) that over the past winter, we read article after article, stating that the Heat would be over the cap and would not be able to offer Whiteside anything other than a MLE type contract.  Maybe it was because they didn't stop at saying it could be done (because it can), but continued on and explained why it actually wouldn't be done because in the end, it couldn't be done.

It seems that the Heat can offer Whiteside a max salary, but the reality of the situation just isn't that simple.

Here's Hoopshype salaries.

http://hoopshype.com/salaries/miami_heat/

Here's basketballinsiders salaries.

http://www.basketballinsiders.com/miami-heat-team-salary/

Two is good enough for me.  So both sites say that the Heat team salary is about 48M, but that is only for 5 or 6 players.  You can also see that that team salary does not include the salary for Wade, Deng, Haslem and just about the rest of the team.

Wade made 20M, I'll give him a raise to 22M (because it will make the math easier, he could get more.)
Deng made 10M, I'll give him a raise to 15M. (same reason, easy math)
Haslem made less than 3M, I'll give him a raise to 5M. (easy math)

22 + 15 + 5 = 42M.  Add that to 48M and you get 90M.  Free agents and draft picks add even more.  That leaves no money for Whiteside.  If they wait on the others and sign Whiteside first, the cap holds probably add up to 42M or more so they still cannot sign him unless they renounce the three players in my example.  Does anyone actually think they will walk away from any of the three I used in my example?

So now we have the real answer and not some kind of, shall I say, incomplete one.

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gyso

gyso,

Good post.

So, my read is that it seems like for the Heat to sign Whiteside they will have to weaken their team or be ready to pay a salary cap tax of some sort.  Of course, they may be weaker without him as well.

Renouncing maybe Haslem (from your examples) would still not get them under the cap if they sign Whiteside to a max contract.  And, as you mentioned, they are not likely to renounce Deng and cannot renounce Wade.

The only other way that they can get under the cap would be to trade (along with renouncing Haslem) some of the guys who are already on guaranteed contracts.  I believe that Dragic is the only really high salaried guy in the bunch, but trading him is, again, going to weaken their team. I doubt that they want to trade Winslow.

Of course, if they decide to pay the cap tax by signing Whiteside, they will not be the first team to do so.  They, themselves, have probably been over the cap in the past.

I am not sure if I were Riley that I would expect/gamble that their team will get much better if basically the entire roster from 2016 all return.  This expectation will certainly be likely if they resign Whiteside to a max.

I just don't see signing Whiteside for a max will significantly help the Heat for 2017.