My thoughts on trading for Giannis, the fit, the off-season & everything else I tweeted recently
A long ramble about the recent news for the Miami Heat - Giannis, Herro, basketball fit, the Heat's philosophy
Damn. My first piece of the season and it’s coming literally in the off-season. There has been a lot that has happened throughout the year, let alone what has been happening recently and what could still happen within this week. I might have to put out multiple thought pieces to cover everything that I’ve been thinking about the team.
But for today, we are focusing on the most recent news and anything else that I’ve been tweeting about — should the Heat even make this trade, how will Giannis Antetokounmpo fit with the team, will they have enough following the trade, how will Bam Adebayo look with him, Herro’s potential departure
Trading for Giannis
Let’s start with the team-building aspect, the decision to go for the trade in the first place, and what the team’s ceiling could be if the trade comes through.
Had you asked me this over a month ago, I would’ve said I don’t want Giannis. That there’s no point if they’re not going to be a legit contender.
I have since come around to getting Giannis. I have been convinced against some of my reasoning from before. There have been fair arguments for it that I didn’t consider. A big part of the change also comes from being an irrational fan.
The irrational fan reason was the one that started it. I want to be excited to watch the Heat again. I watched Giannis with the Bucks, despite them not winning. I watched Stephen Curry with the Golden State Warriors when they were losing and being a play-in team. I watched Damian Lillard miss out on the playoffs with the Portland Trail Blazers. Exciting stars, who are even at least top 10 calibre, let alone being in the best in the world conversations, do a lot for fan interest.
There will be a lot more things to look forward to and things that I can talk myself into mattering more with Giannis. Having a superstar that is still capable of being the best in the world does give you a lot to talk about — stars drive the league.
That alone convinced me, and it made my current reasons against them trading for him less relevant.
I am, after all, still just a fan.
My main reason against the trade in the first place was that I don’t think they will either be close to being a favourite or a clear-cut contender against anyone, nor will they have realistic avenues to get there.
Sure, not every build has to be a clear-cut favourite for them to have deep, exciting runs. Hell, that was literally the entire Jimmy Butler era, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Both the 2020 and 2023 runs were the most exciting I’ve had as a fan. I will never forget the bubble and the experience of watching Butler give everything he can. That’s exactly what you want as a fan.
But this is just keeping the can down the road. As much as those eras were exciting, I still want to at least believe we have a chance of winning. Selfishly, I do want to experience a win, even though I know how difficult that is, and even being in the finals is something that most fans may not experience in their lifetime.
Being against the trade for Giannis is more to do with the lack of trust in the front office at this point. They will keep getting themselves into the same cycle of always being good enough but always coming up short because they won’t pull the plug on what hurts them the most.
This potential Giannis trade could’ve been the absolute best thing ever, had they actually made an effort to set themselves up for this. The hunt for this whale has been a thing since the bubble. They had countless times to make decisions to make this process easier to get him and surround him with better talent.
Even with Butler, they had potential moves to go all in on that particular window and didn’t. Some of the pushback was that they couldn’t sacrifice the picks, the flexibility, the future and the assets because they need to get ready for Giannis.
THOSE SAME PICKS PEOPLE SAID WE COULDN’T TRADE ARE NOW PART OF THIS TRADE THAT HOLD LESS VALUE.
I dug up the same thing with Donovan Mitchell in 2022. They had to get other teams involved to even have a chance to get the assets needed to get the star, and they’d still come out dry at the end of it.
Getting Giannis will be great and will make the team a contender, but this can just be the same story over and over and over again, and they have no one but themselves to blame.
Even now, we have reports that they won’t even go all in just to get Giannis because they don’t want to overpay with mid assets.
The players going away isn’t my issue. It’s the remaining picks. They will have to still somehow get better, and how would you get better without the picks to get better?
Many compare this situation to Butler joining the Heat, but those situations aren’t comparable. They didn’t have to give up as much to get Giannis in the first place, even if the pieces are still mid. They had more remaining mid pieces to even make a trade for Jae Crowder or Andre Iguodala.
Another aspect is contracts and players overachieving.
I got pushback on this on a tweet when I said that Adebayo’s development was just as important as Butler's coming. Adebayo, for two years, was a top five defender making less than five percent of the cap.
To put that in comparison, he was making less money than Davion Mitchell and Simone Fontecchio. This was a player who was arguably the best in the Eastern Conference Finals versus the Boston Celtics.
Duncan Robinson was another one. You had a top five shooter making even less money. Robinson was one of the best shooters in the league, making less money than a 39-year-old Udonis Haslem. Dru Smith was making more this year.
Tyler Herro another one. He outplayed his rookie contract by a good margin.
These things matter. These are the margins that can make or break a contender’s chances in building out a roster, especially when the impact really goes beyond the dollar. Adebayo had a +3.5 EPM, which was in the 96th percentile. Robinson was at +2.4 in the 93rd. Getting that impact when combined, they make less than Luke Kornet.
A lot went right for the Heat in those years that made some of the roster construction possible. And they were still behind and didn’t have enough assets to get them over the hill. I don’t think they have better circumstances in this situation, despite the gap in Giannis being significantly better.
Because there will still be a lot of work to be done to surround both Giannis and Adebayo with the best roster to win a championship — the main concern will be the guard position. That guard who can score in isolation, in the PNR, and not be a complete liability on defense has been the ghost the Heat have been chasing to pair with Butler. People say this as if it’s going to be so easy to find that player or get them via the mid-level exception. Those players also require giving up picks — a different type of player, but take the Jrue Holiday trade for the Bucks or even Derrick White.
I just have little faith in the front office based on everything they’ve shown the last few years. And even if they did make better decisions, there’s still so much you can do without assets. They never have extra picks that aren’t their own. They rarely have blue-chip prospects that you can 100% sell on being a high-ceiling player.
And they will keep being in this position until they have a change in their entire philosophy, but I guess we can’t expect change when they are bound by their 10 commandments.
The actual basketball side of the trade
Now, let’s assume the trade goes down. Let’s be cautious and just assume most of the players are gone; that leaves the core of Adebayo, Giannis, Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins, and Davion Mitchell. Everyone else is gone.
I have no doubts about Giannis, even in 2026. The man is simply a freak of nature. He has still had:
The highest TS% of his career at 65.7%
The highest scoring rate at 35.1 per 75(led the league)
The highest points created at 53.7(led the league)
The highest 2pt percentage at 64.7%
The highest rim attempts at 14.2
The third highest rim FG% at 77.6%
The second highest FTA at 12.6
This is his true shooting attempts and efficiency in creation(PNR, isolation and post up), spacing(spot up, off screen, handoffs), transition, finishing(cut, roll man, putback, misc):
This is insane.
Here are his impact stats on the six factors:
Still elite on both ends of the floor.
There should be zero. None. Absolutely no questions about how good Giannis is.
There are obviously questions with the fit, but I think people are exaggerating them.
Some of the fit concerns don’t worry me as much as elite talent at the top will find a way to make it work. But the bigger reason is I don’t think there are any players on the Heat who warrant such questions.
Yes, Adebayo may not be exactly the best spacer, nor are Wiggins or Mitchell. But none of those players are players you can’t work around or have to accommodate to a big extent.
I don’t see this as an issue in the way Lillard and Giannis had. Where you have two top 10 level talents needed to fit together. As good as Adebayo is, I still have him lower offensively than most would and have him as a role player on that end. He’s a terrific big that is capable of doing a bit of everything. He doesn’t warrant high usage. He doesn’t need the ball in his hands. He doesn’t need to take many shots. He has molded into what has been needed.
Even the clunky fit with Butler and Adebayo worked on both ends. These are the minutes from 2020-22 in the regular season:
And this is in the playoffs:
The offense got better in the playoffs(and that’s counting the disgusting 2021 series).
There was a drop in the 2023 playoffs with both of them on where they had an 112.5 ORTG(-2.0 rORTG), and that does raise a bit of a question because that was a year where Adebayo changed his playstyle more. But in the regular season, that was still elite with both of them on.
There will be a question if both Giannis and Adebayo can maximise each other because with Butler and Adebayo, they did both get better without one another:
It didn’t hinder the team’s success and their impact on the offense, but I wonder if we’ll see something similar with the new duo.
One big difference that makes me a bit more skeptical is that both Giannis and Butler are very different players. Butler is a wing. Giannis is a big. He’s more of a post-up guy and works the elbows too. That has always been more Adebayo’s work.
BUT. This is a different Adebayo, especially the one from this year. I’m not talking about being a different scorer and being able to do more in that way. I don’t believe that part has made him more impactful — this is where I don’t agree with the take that Giannis is getting the better Adebayo than Butler had.
What Adebayo has shown this year is the potential to be a wing. He has more than doubled his attempts as a spacer:
37% of his offense comes from spacing. The next highest was 18% last year. This year was also the lowest self-creation since his rookie year. He had the highest transition frequency.
One other interesting shift has been a drop of almost half in his finishing frequencies. I have conflicting thoughts on this.
Adebayo, when he was mainly a finisher off the PNR, was when he was the most impactful. You couldn’t have stopped him from rolling to the rim. As a roller is when he got to the rim the most:
That’s where you can see most of his attempts came either at the rim, where he was a 70% shooter, or at the line. That is a highly efficient and impactful offense.
The last few years, that shifted to being a roller to the mid-range and the paint for floaters. This year, the PNR was completely gone.
Now, that could go either way. That could be a good thing, especially if Giannis takes the big responsibilities. It would make the fit easier if Adebayo plays like a true wing.
But then that raises the question of Adebayo’s improvement.
It’s great that his development went this way and he’s looked good, but the expectations change quickly when you get Giannis and need to win. This will have to change. You can’t have most of your offense be this playtype and be below league average at 53.2% TS. That makes his offense bad and makes the fit clunkier because teams won’t respect him.
On top of that, he’d also have to improve his finishing. Before, his main way of getting shots at the rim that were much closer and much easier was through rolling, but that has gradually gone away, and you can see his finishing declining:
He’s had a negative rTS% on his 2pt scoring in the last four seasons. He was at +3% in the previous three. That’s almost a 6% swing in efficiency compared to his best seasons. That matters a lot. That’s leaving points on the table.
So, as a whole, this is very vague and open, but the potential fit can really go one way or the other, and it almost entirely depends on Adebayo’s improvement and/or change in style. There are avenues where I can see the fit mesh perfectly, and there are others where I see it being quite bad.
With the rest of the team, I don’t see it. I’m not a fan of Wiggins or Powell with this team, but that’s mostly on them as players, rather than simply the fit issues with the team.
I’ve shared my concerns about Wiggins repeatedly at this point.
Similar issues with Powell. I don’t think he’s the kind of guard that both Adebayo and Giannis would need. They need capable ball handlers who can also get them the ball instead of always hunting for shots.
Powell could be a good option as a 6th man because he is still an exceptional shooter. This is his efficiency as a spacer over the years:
To wrap this up, everything here is pretty much TBD. But with the potential we’ve seen from Adebayo and his change already, on top of Giannis being a BITW calibre and having Erik Spoelstra as the coach, it does give me more optimism than not. I’d still need to see the entire roster before making any comments.
Everything else I tweeted about
In other news, we might be seeing Herro go to the Pistons. I feel like, at this point, whether they get Giannis or not, we have seen Herro play his last game with the Heat. At this point, I think most fans just feel good that it’s over — whether you’re a fan or not.
I’ve been seeing a lot more Pistons fans’ thoughts on all of this, and a lot of the time I just ask myself what they're talking about.
I’m not going to dive deeper into all of this. My stance on Herro has been consistent over the years, and what I value and what I prefer as a general philosophy on players and how basketball should be.
Everything that has been an issue with him during his time in Miami comes a lot to how the Heat treated him and what they tried to make him out to be. That’s definitely not on him.
But the reasoning behind it doesn’t matter. It still happened. The reasoning doesn’t change basketball, and what happened on the court and what should matter more.
I saw a tweet that asked how you will remember his tenure with the Heat.
The first two seasons were all glowing. I genuinely did love his game early in his career as he was improving. I was a believer in him. A big reason why I thought the 2022 Heat were going to the finals is that I assumed with Kyle Lowry, they had the scorer they looked to replace Goran Dragic with. I thought he could be that guy.
But now, the memory is more bitter where it’s Heat believed in this guy to a point where they couldn’t have improved the team when they had a clear window to win, and it’s so damn unfortunate.
ON THE TOPIC OF THE PISTONS. There have been reports that they may end up getting Robinson back, and I welcome that.
I tweeted some Robinson praise:
I’d 100% welcome a top 10 shooter of all time. It’s crazy that this undrafted guy is only behind Curry in 3-pointers made and attempts per 100 in both regular season and playoffs.
This report had me thinking about the front office:
And it’s for Trae Young. These are the kind of deals that I’d welcome if it’s not for Giannis. But these moves would only make sense if they actually played their cards right after getting Young.
That’s how you get assets. You buy low on disgruntled stars or ones that can’t find a team. They, hopefully, regain their value and you get more for them.
But they had their chance doing that with Powell and didn’t — my faith isn’t that strong then.
This was also funny digging up:
This exactly what I mean by the Heat shooting themselves in the foot. If they don’t get Giannis, they only have themselves to blame because of how they went about preparing themselves for this chance.
We literally had this conversation in 2022.
Thoughts on going forward
Now, at the time of writing, I have no idea what is going to happen. Will they get Giannis or not? I won’t be surprised either way.
I have kind of already laid out some thoughts on whether they get Giannis. That is also my preference. I want them to get him because it will add some excitement. Then we can have some fun seeing how they can build out their roster for this year and for the following years. They would finally have the superstar they craved — this would be the third best player in franchise history.
But let’s assume they strike out and Brad Stevens gets the best of Pat Riley.
If that’s the case, I have one plan for the Heat. Keep everyone but Wiggins, Powell, and Herro. That is it.
Everyone else can stay. Everyone young stays. Every pick remains. There are no trades to get better by using any assets. This feels like deja vu because I said this exact plan the previous season.
This route would be what helps them get assets and hopefully improve their chances of getting better in the future. This won’t be looking at getting better on Adebayo’s timeline. Everyone would just be the means of getting better.
It would be looking for deals like Powell, where you can get something out of nothing. It would be getting more young players(using the 13th pick). It would just be prioritising development(not tanking, though).
But right now, I don’t want to think about that. I want to believe that we’re still getting Giannis.
And that is it for these thoughts. If you got to the end, thank you. It was a long ramble.
I’ll be looking to get back into making content again, hopefully, so be tuned for more thoughts, breakdowns, and a lot more content if things do move forward with the trade.