Pat Riley ‘ready to roll forward,’ try to make Miami Heat better after being swept in playoffs

Pat Riley completed his annual end of the season press conference Thursday afternoon by promising reporters “there’ll be a lot of news coming along the way” this summer.

No, the Miami Heat are not in a great position to reel in a max-contract-worthy player this summer.

Nor does Miami have the draft capital to swing a major trade without giving up something of real substance in return for the kind of player who can make them look a lot better than the team that just got swept out of the playoffs with relative ease by Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks.

But Riley, 76, didn’t sound deterred by the challenges facing him and the franchise he has helped lead to three NBA titles and three more Eastern Conference crowns. He’s not ready to retire like 62-year-old Danny Ainge did on Wednesday after winning one title in 18 years as Boston’s lead executive.

As the freshly shaved and suited-up Riley noted, he’s “getting ready for the (draft) combine” and “ready to roll forward and try to make this team better” even after an intense 14 months in which two NBA seasons were affected by the COVID-19 virus.

“I have a pretty good idea, and I think we all do, about where we’re headed and what we have,” Riley said of the Heat, which enters the offseason with five players under contract (Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Precious Achiuwa and KZ Okpala), two young assets in sharpshooter Duncan Robinson and guard Kendrick Nunn set for raises in restricted free agency and roughly $27 million in cap space to work with including an additional $9.5 million exception.

“We know that we have the flexibility that we need to go in a lot of different directions and either stay the same or either add to the mix,” Riley continued. “The market will probably determine a lot of that as we move forward. But I like the nucleus of our team. We’ve got a great core with Jimmy and Bam. Regardless of how they performed in the playoffs, we didn’t make a mistake on those guys, that’s for sure. And we’ve got other young players…”

Riley called Herro, a bubble darling for the Heat as a rookie, “a core player,” Thursday.

But does that mean he’s untradeable? Probably not — especially if it helps Miami add a third star to pair with Adebayo and Butler.

It’s likely nothing more than a pie-in-the-sky dream, but the Heat’s team president did bring up two recent playoff performances by Kawhi Leonard and Damian Lillard on his own Thursday. Both are 30-year-old stars in the prime of their careers who could potentially be hungry for a change of scenery if their teams fail to get out of the first round in this year’s playoffs. But getting them — or other All-Stars — would require those players wanting to come to Miami the way Butler did a few summers ago.

“We made a decision last year what we would do is try to preserve room for this year,” Riley said. “We’re not going to have a max slot, but we’re going to have a lot of room if we want to use that.

“I don’t think you can continue to defer your (cap) room or your flexibility down the road. Somewhere you have to make a decision on the two or three players that you think are your franchise anchors, other players around them who can complement them and players that will really add a specific fix to what our weaknesses are.”

The Heat’s weaknesses weren’t hard to see in the playoffs. The Bucks exposed Miami’s rebounding issues. The Heat were the worst rebounding team in the East (36.2 per game) in the regular season and got destroyed by the Bucks in the playoffs on the boards.

Miami’s offensive breakdowns were similarly disturbing. After leading the NBA in true shooting percentage when they made their bubble run to the NBA Finals last October, the Heat entered this year’s playoffs 10th in the same statistical category, averaging only 108.1 points per game, the second-lowest scoring output among all 16 playoff teams.

Butler, who turns 32 in September and is eligible for a four-year extension from the Heat this offseason worth as much as $181 million, was swallowed up by Antetokoumpo in this year’s playoffs. Butler followed up a stellar regular season (21.5 points on a career-best 49.7 percent shooting and career highs in rebounds, assists and steals) by averaging only 14.5 points on 29.7 percent shooting to go with 7.5 rebounds and seven assists. The Heat, though, went 7-13 in the 20 regular season games Butler missed and 33-19 when he was healthy.

Asked if the Heat have talked about adding two more years to Butler’s contract, Riley said it “hasn’t really” been discussed internally yet. But Riley added, “Somewhere along the line, you know when you have great players, All-NBA players, All-Defensive players, players like Jimmy … you’re going to have to pay them what their market value is.”

The more pressing issue, though, could be what the Heat do to help Adebayo continue to grow as a player on the offensive end. The Bucks challenged him to shoot from the outside by dropping Brook Lopez into the paint, and Adebayo struggled to get into any real offensive flow.

Erik Spoelstra has paired Adebayo in the past with big men who can stretch the floor with their 3-point shooting. But that approach may have to change, Riley said, to “the next thing in the NBA” that helps Adebayo and the Heat play their best style of offense.

“I think when it comes down to really taking a look at his season, evaluating a lot of film, I think Spo has to evaluate a little bit how he uses Bam,” Riley said. “Bam is one of our primary ballhandlers and gets us into offense, and sometimes there is a disconnect between running offense and really being effective as an offensive player. I think all of those things will be worked out.

“But I do know that we’ve got one of the highest-character, toughest guys in the league that really has a lot of talent, still has a lot of upside. I wouldn’t let what happened against Milwaukee in any way shape or form affect as far as what I think Bam can bring. All the questions that you all are basically coming at me with are about style. Or what Bam has to do to improve. Or Jimmy or Duncan or Tyler or anybody (else). I think all those things over the next four or five months, guys will be working on them, and coaches will be working on them. I think Bam probably as much as anybody will be working on it.”

The Heat of course could have been in a better position this summer to provide Adebayo with help ($12 million more in cap space) had Adebayo waited to sign his max contract this offseason. But Riley said Thursday that Adebayo and his agent pushed for that extension last summer.

“We did discuss every single option and picture and scenario out in front of him,” Riley said. “But he deserved it. He was up for it. The guy came off an All-Star year and came off an NBA Finals year. I think the most important thing you do now in this league is when you get a great, great young player (you lock him up)… he did what was in his best interest, and we simply said, ‘Yes.’ We’d try to convince them that this could be different, but at the end of the day this is what the man deserved.”

As for Robinson and Nunn, two undrafted players set for potential raises reportedly upwards of $15 million for next season, Riley applauded their efforts and development in the Heat’s system. Miami has the right to match any offer Nunn and Robinson receive from other teams if it extends a qualifying offer to them as expected this summer. Their 2021-22 cap hits would be between $4.4 million and $4.7 million, respectively.

“Both of those players have performed at a very high level,” Riley said. “They really helped us. If you think about it, K-9, he averages 15 a game, he shoots 38 percent from 3. He’s a guy that can probe the defense. He can get to the basket. He can raise on 3s. He can raise on floaters, on runners. He’s a hell of an offensive player. He’s not really a playmaker, from that standpoint, or somebody who’s a point (guard), who’s going to run offense and score. But he’s a helluva player.

“Duncan could be considered the top shooter in the NBA. So I applaud both of these guys for coming in with just very little reputation, no guarantees, winning their jobs, winning their spots, winning their time. They’ve had their ups and downs, but young players will. But we like both of them, and we’ll see what happens with both of them, when it comes to the market.”

As for Herro, Riley said: “He’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out with him.”

“What happened to him going down the stretch, I actually thought he got better as a player. If you think about his first year or his first 35 or 40 games, he really was strictly a catch-and-shoot type of player coming off of screens and catching and shooting. The only way that he was ever going to become a complete offensive player is he had to improve his ball-handling with both his right hand and his left hand, and he did. He’s an exceptional ball-handler. Now he can create space and get into gaps and raise on jumpers from almost anywhere. This year was really a step up, not experimenting, but he did a lot of probing and dribbling and going into the gaps and driving baseline and dribbling back out the other side. That’s sort of the nature of a scorer. He and K-9 are scorers, and we expect his shooting now to even get even better in those situations. As far as the other parts of his game, I think as he grows up, he’s going to grow and mature as a player and he’ll get better across the board. But he’s a core player. I’m not concerned about him.”

As for Victor Oladipo, who was injured after playing in only four games after being acquired at the trade deadline, Riley said the Heat will wait until August to sit down and talk with him about the future.

“We knew when we made the trade that there was a risk,” Riley said. “… he’ll be like any other free agent that we would have on the team that sustained an injury. He’ll be rehabbing with us until he’s healthy enough to get out of that cast. We’ll just monitor him, work with him and then we’ll see what happens.”

If the Heat can re-sign Oladipo using cap exception money, the Heat could maximize the 29-year-old former All-Star’s value while he recovers from another serious injury to his quadriceps. It would allow Miami to keep his Bird rights and pay him more a year from now once he’s recovered. Or, they could trade him to address their needs in the frontcourt.

All of it remains up in the air.

Riley isn’t worried about it just yet. The Heat’s season is over and there’s finally some time to relax and burn some of that Milwaukee tape.

“… Our future is waiting,” Riley said. “I hope it’s a lot brighter than it was with what we showed last week.”