Heat president Pat Riley held court with the media today for the first time since July, and offered insight on how the 66-win Heat were built, as well as a few hints about his plan to keep the defending champs together. Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald, Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com all provide detail. We'll round it up here:
- Riley suggested the team may need a new, high-dollar local television contract to absorb the tax hit necessary to keep LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh together beyond 2014, when they can all opt out and become free agents. A report last summer suggested the team was in talks with Fox Sports about a deal that would pay them $80MM-$100MM per season, but both the team and Fox denied it.
- Riley thinks keeping the team together is "doable" and said the front office has already begun to craft its plan for doing so, but said it's ultimately up to Micky Arison to decide how much he wants to shell out.
- Coach Erik Spoelstra was the driving force behind the team's midseason acquisition of Chris Andersen. "If I got another text from (Spoelstra) about getting Chris Andersen, I was going to put my hands around his neck," Riley quipped.
- Riley declined comment on Spoelstra's contract, which runs out after next season.
- The team believes Wade can handle point guard duties in case Mario Chalmers or Norris Cole goes down, and that's why they didn't seek more depth at the position this season.
- It doesn't seem as though the Heat will fully embrace analytics anytime soon, as Riley said proponents of advance metrics "make me squeamy a little bit," Haberstroh tweets.
they technically already are big proponents of advanced metrics. They dont use SportVU, but they measure things like how much ground a player covers in certain situations. Joel Anthony is a great example of that. They have said many times that of all the players that they have ever evaluated, he covers the most ground at his size. His athleticism allows them to switch more and also allows for more traps, feeling assured that Joel can get back to guard the spot he left open before anything happens.
Interesting! I’ve been counting them as an old-school front office for a while, since they’re not one of the SportVU teams. I’ve changed the wording a little bit here, given your info. Thanks!
–Chuck
out of curiosity, will information from SportVU ever become available to the public like the statistics we see on basketball-reference or other box scores? I’ve always been curious about the number of passes Lebron James makes that lead to assists or lead to fouls. I like to see the % of rebounds players get when they actually have the ball in their vicinity instead of rebounds per game or per 36 minutes. Things like those and the ground players cover, etc are all information that SportVU apparently would provide
I’d like to think some of that info will become public knowledge eventually, but right now it appears that it’s a commodity that the company and its clients (the teams) would prefer to keep under wraps. I got a lot out of a podcast that Grantland’s Zach Lowe did with the company’s VP earlier this year: link to grantland.com…
thanks. I’ll check that out. Hopefully if/when the info from SportVU becomes available, they’ll also have the stats from these first couple of years available as well. Cant wait until it hopefully happens. I’m a big stat person and this SportVU thing is literally the greatest thing I have ever seen