It’s not because they have an abundance of young assets to incite teams in trades; it’s because they have players with the necessary salaries to make trades for stars on big contracts work.
The contracts of James Johnson, Goran Dragic and Dion Waiters were heralded as overpays at the time, and they still are, but if the Heat were to land a guy like Chris Paul in a trade, they’ll need a couple of those players simply to match Paul’s $41.37 million per year salary.
Last year, Victor Oladipo was the only Indiana Pacer that made more than $13.