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No. 4: Miami Heat
Last Season: 37-45
10th place in East; missed playoffs
Season 1 of the post-LeBron era wasn't quite like Cleveland in 2010-11, but team president Pat Riley would be the last person to call it a success. The Heat pieced together a roster that crumbled during the season and missed the playoffs. With a revamped bench and a healthy Chris Bosh, Riley had no problem this summer setting championship aspirations with the Heat in Season 2 After LeBron. Former Phoenix teammates Amare Stoudemire and Gerald Green have re-united with Goran Dragic at 601 Biscayne Boulevard, and the Heat hope to recreate some of the up-tempo magic of the Mike D'Antoni era.
That will be easier said than done for coach Erik Spoelstra -- especially with overnight sensation Hassan Whiteside also needing touches deep in the paint and Dwyane Wade turning 34. The Heat have lofty goals and a championship pedigree, but the reality reveals a team in search of its own identity. Sure, the starting lineup is formidable, but can the team play elite defense with its one-way additions? Can they play fast if Whiteside and Wade drag along? None of that matters if they can't stay healthy. With this roster, they might never answer those questions.
Where does one begin? We'll start in the summer of 2014. Improvising on the spot once LeBron James stunned the Heat by going back to Cleveland, the Heat nabbed Luol Deng and Josh McRoberts to join the organization's 2014-15 reboot. As it turns out, best-laid plans of mice and men go astray.
After missing training camp and preseason recovering from toe surgery, McRoberts played just 14 games before tearing his meniscus in mid-December. Chris Bosh, unbeknownst to him, played for weeks with a blood clot in his lung and needed to be hospitalized just before the All-Star break, ending his season. Wade missed 20 games and struggled to play with his usual hyper-efficiency and athleticism at age 33.
Entering April with about an 80 percent chance of making the playoffs according to SportsClubStats tracking, the team fell apart and lost six of its final nine games. For just the second time in Wade's NBA career, the Heat missed the playoffs.
It wasn't all bad. There were two major bright spots for the Heat: the addition of Dragic and the arrival of Whiteside. Dragic came in a three-team trade deadline deal that saw the Heat surrender two future first-round draft picks. Dragic came at a steep price, but he represents the team's best point guard since Tim Hardaway.
Signed midseason off the waiver wire, Whiteside finished with 22 double-doubles and the highest point per touch in the NBA. That's partly because he never passed the ball -- he finished with six assists in over 1,000 minutes -- but Whiteside emerged as one of the most productive big men in the league before a freak hand injury derailed his rampage.
The Heat's rollercoaster offseason kicked off with fireworks on draft night. With the 10th pick, the Heat brass watched Duke champion wing Justise Winslow fall into their lap. Winslow was projected by some in the organization to go to New York at No. 4 and, thus, Miami didn't see the need to work him out. They got him anyway.
But anxiety began to set in shortly after draft night. Losing LeBron James in free agency was one thing. Could the Heat actually lose Wade the following summer, too? For a while this past summer, it looked like Wade might follow James out of town.
Though rumors swelled that Wade could bolt to the Lakers or Cavaliers, Heat owner Micky Arison stepped in and helped convince Wade to stay on a one-year, $20 million deal that gave Wade his money and flexibility to enter the 2016 free agency bonanza. With Wade and Deng -- who opted in with a player option -- back in the fold, the Heat quickly moved to sign Dragic to a five-year extension worth $90 million, a bit lower than the max.
The starting lineup was set. The Heat immediately began plugging holes by grabbing veterans Green and Stoudemire on veteran minimum deals. To make room for prized second-round pick Josh Richardson, the Heat dealt Shabazz Napier to the Magic and Goran's brother Zoran Dragic to the Celtics. Despite being constantly tossed and turned in the trade rumor mill, Mario Chalmers and Chris Andersen haven't packed their bags. Yet.
In a league more driven each season by advanced metrics, Riley points to one number that sums up the Miami Heat's prospects entering the season: Zero.
That's the number of games Dragic, Wade, Deng, Bosh and Whiteside -- Miami's starting five -- played together last season. Because of various injuries, illnesses and attrition, one team official suggested that group might not have even spent a minute together in the locker room.
But amid the threat of Wade's free-agency departure, uncertainty of Deng's future and possibility of losing Dragic on the open market after trading two future first-round picks for him, Riley and owner Micky Arison completed their summer mission to retain top assets.
Coming off a 37-45 tumble, the Heat now hit the reset button on their reboot in Year 2 of the post-LeBron era, starting with the Oct. 28 season opener against Charlotte. Taking that step from zero to first will have been a process eight months in the making since Feb. 19, the day Dragic was acquired just hours before Miami learned it would lose Bosh for the season to treat a blood clot.
"This team has all of the elements of a championship team," Riley said in a recent ESPN radio interview. "That's where you start with a team like this. We have an opportunity to create a new first." -- Michael Wallace
Projected Real Plus-Minus for starters
Goran Dragic, PG: +1.4
Dwyane Wade, SG: -0.8
Luol Deng, SF: +2.2
Chris Bosh, PF: +1.7
Hassan Whiteside, C: -0.8
Scouting reports on every player on the Heat
Using shot data from 2014-15 and projected starters, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry ranks each team's offensive efficiency based on square footage.
The Heat have four starters who eclipse 60 percent from inside 5 feet -- including Whiteside, who posts a LeBron-like 71 percent.
Their perimeter game tells a different story. Not a single Heat starter projects to be above NBA average from beyond the arc in 2015-16.
All About The Space: 4th (468 sq. ft. of above-average offense)
To identify players who stretch offenses the most, ESPN Stats & Info created the Kyle Korver effect -- a metric on a 1-100 scale, factoring in 3PT%, 3-point attempt rate (percentage of total shots that come from 3-point range) and influence on teammate FG%.
Korver effect: Gerald Green (88.2) does more than leap! His 36 percent on 3s helps an outside game that was 24th in 2014-15.
No team carries an "if healthy" qualifier tag larger than the Heat. With Bosh, Wade, Stoudemire, Whiteside and McRoberts facing considerable injury concerns going forward, the bulk of the Heat's availability could be in question throughout the season, making it almost impossible to peg a projection for the squad.
For one thing, the roster is top-heavy. With a starting lineup of Dragic, Wade, Deng, Bosh and Whiteside, the Heat have one of the most powerful five-man units in the NBA. How does it stack up with the top-five players on every other roster? Not as high as you might think. WARP projections place the Heat's quintet as the eighth-strongest in the NBA, far behind the Cleveland Cavaliers.
According to this measure, the Cleveland starting core is almost 50 percent stronger than the Heat's, which already factors in Kyrie Irving's injury. Of course, the whole of the Heat's starting lineup could be greater than the sum of its parts, but that's unlikely given that they've played exactly zero minutes together. They won't have the continuity bump that other cores can enjoy.
The bigger issue is that the Heat needed to upgrade their 19th-ranked defense from last season and they added two of the sorriest NBA defenders on the planet in Stoudemire and Green. As such, WARP projections see the Heat ranking 20th on that end, and RPM is even more bearish, projecting a 24th ranking on that end. The offense -- if it gets enough shooting out of Dragic, Deng and Bosh -- should be fine.
Whiteside, who's due for a big payday next summer, can change everything. The 26-year-old posted the highest block rate among starters last season, but he's prone to chasing swats rather than playing sound defense. Ultimately, too much of the Heat's season rests on the large-but-slippery shoulders of Whiteside, who was ejected twice last season for altercations.
With a host of contracts expiring this summer, almost every player is betting on themselves. However, it's not a safe bet that everything will fall in place for the Heat. In many ways, the Heat's ceiling is as high as Whiteside will take them.
East No. 3 | East No. 5 | Full List
