Miami Heat: Pat Riley made an audacious gamble at the trade deadline

Pat Riley is back at it again, tinkering with a Miami Heat team that he seems to believe has a chance to rise to the top of the East

Pat Riley knows how to win championships. That much is clear.

He’s won in Los Angeles and Miami as a coach, and in his pseudo retirement, he’s collected two more titles as the architect down in South Beach. He knows what a championship team looks like. If he thinks this year’s squad can make the transformation from Fun, Happy-Go-Lucky Overachiever to Legitimate Title Contender, who are we to doubt him?

Earlier this week, the Miami Heat struck a deal with the Memphis Grizzlies to rescue Andre Iguodala from his self-sanctioned sabbatical. And despite Iguodala’s presence as one of the longest-tenured players in the league, Riley awarded him a two-year, $30 million extension upon his arrival to Biscayne Bay. But, much to the surprise of the basketball viewing public, it cost him dearly to bring in the 3-time champion and former Finals MVP.

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Whether you agree with that statement depends on how you view Justise Winslow, the promising, but oft-injured guard for whom the Heat held high hopes before this season. After a few difficult seasons, in which he struggled to find a role that best suited him, Winslow seemed to be hitting his stride toward the latter half of last season after transitioning to a more ball-dominant role in Erik Spoelstra’s whirring, motion offense.

It felt like the Heat essentially picked Winslow over Josh Richardson, who they jettisoned in the offseason to bring in South Beach’s new favorite son, Jimmy Butler. Obviously I wasn’t privy to those negotiations, but the two of them were fresh off similarly productive seasons at the time, and I believe they possessed similar value on the trade market.

Giving up Winslow has to hurt both Spoelstra and Riley. They drafted him, stuck with him through the dark years, when some were eager to slap the “bust” label on him, nurtured him inside their own system, and awarded him a contract that instantly became one of the bigger bargains in the league once he started to realize his vast potential. But sometimes this is the price of doing business. You can’t get something without giving something up.

(I’m prepared for this to look stupid when the Lakers and Clippers inevitably reap the benefits of the robust buyout market when that time comes).

It wasn’t that long ago that Riley, the big-game hunter, and renowned team-builder, doubled down on a feel-good Heat team that went 30-11 in the second half of the season to climb back to 41-41, hardly a high-water mark for a team that reached the Finals four consecutive times last decade, winning two.

Had Riley gotten too sentimental, too attached to mediocrity? Did the fans and their insatiable love for this scrappy, overachieving bunch force him to hand out bloated contracts to players who wouldn’t sniff what they ultimately got on the open market?

In retrospect, these decisions seem even more confounding and perplexing considering the way Riley treated the franchise icon, Dwyane Wade, on his way out the door. Unwilling to meet his contractual demands, Riley let Wade test the open market, and ultimately let him sign with another team, something that seemed unthinkable during the Heatles era, and even before that.

The collection of guys that Riley signed to over-market deals – Dion Waiters, Kelly Olynyk and James Johnson – were overpaid seemingly the minute the ink dried on their contracts. The master chess player – always a step or two ahead – settling for a bunch of role players as his marquee free agent signings didn’t make sense, and that’s before we even talk about the allure of Miami and the Heat’s status as a marquee free-agent destination.

We all thought that these puzzling decisions would come back to haunt Riley, prohibiting him from doing what he does best: Using his cache as a legendary, larger-than-life figure to lure superstars who are hungry for a chance at a title. For at least one offseason, the doubters got to take a long-awaited victory lap.

But no one’s laughing now. Somehow, someway, with no cap space to play with, Riley maneuvered his way into Jimmy Butler this past offseason by selling him on the central tenets of #HeatCulture – grittiness, tough-mindedness and a desire to outwork every other team and player around the league. It’s no surprise this message resonated with Butler, who’s long been one of the league’s hardest workers and resident tough guys.

Butler’s prickly personality isn’t for everyone (see: Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins), but it’s proven to be a perfect match for Spoelstra and Riley. There’s a reason the Heat fans connected with that overachieving 2016-17 team, despite their inability to qualify for the playoffs. If there’s one thing we love more than a title-contending team, it’s those that far outpace their projections; the ones who overachieve so fantastically that we have no choice but to develop an unbreakable bond with that specific group of hard-nosed players.

Just look at how much fun they’re having in Memphis and Oklahoma City this year. Projected to miss out on the playoffs, these two fan bases are enjoying the hell out of this season, despite title chances that sit dangerously close to zero.

You can lump the Heat into that conversation too if you want to. Butler’s addition was roundly praised but no one could’ve seen this coming. We’ve witnessed the emergence of Kendrick Nunn and Duncan Robinson, two undrafted finds who have been crucial to their success to this point. Robinson is starting for a surefire playoff team, which is a sentence that still feels sort of unfathomable.

He stretches defenses to their breaking point, opening up driving lanes for Butler and Nunn, who plays with a fervor and passion that unsurprisingly resonates with groups of fans who grew accustomed to Wade’s reckless ambition over the course of last decade.

Riley sensed that the time was right to push his chips to the center of the proverbial poker table, to cash in some of his depreciating assets for players who have been there before; players more attuned to the rigors of playoff basketball.

For all of Winslow’s promise and untapped potential, he has simply failed to play in enough basketball games to convince this team and front office that he was an essential piece of their resurgence this season. The best ability is availability, as they say.

Riley entered this crucial season with a collection of bloated, non-expiring contracts and a dearth of attractive trade assets. (As the season progressed, it became clear that Tyler Herro and Kendrick Nunn weren’t going anywhere). But yet again, he’s turned lemons into champagne.

Even the best prognosticators don’t know exactly what the future holds, meaning we can’t be sure that the addition of Iguodala will propel this team to anything more than a second-round exit. We might be witnessing the start of Giannis’s LeBronish reign over the Eastern Conference, which spells doom for any of his potential challengers, the Heat included.

Riley, however, doesn’t want to hear any of that. He clearly sees something in this group that has emboldened him to go all-in, even amidst the presence of an all-time dominant team in his conference. Like I said before, Riley has seen dominant, title-winning teams before. He’s coached them and he’s put them together. This year, he sensed his opportunity and subsequently pounced all over it. We’d be fools to doubt him again.