Most entered the NBA offseason believing the Miami Heat needed to make a star-sized splash or blow up the team entirely to chart a promising course forward. Well, they ended up doing neither of those things—and proved just about everybody wrong in the process.
In the absence of landing a marquee player, the Heat have done the next best thing: keep their big-picture options open, without torpedoing next season's on-court product.
Don't just take our word for it, either. ESPN's Kevin Pelton gave Miami a B+ grade for its offseason activity. Here is what he wrote while highlighting their creation and use of flexibility:
"It was an opportunistic offseason for the Heat, who took advantage of the money saved by swapping Duncan Robinson for Simone Fontecchio to convert players on the fringes of their rotation into Norman Powell, who scored 21.