With guaranteed salary committed to only five players for 2016/17, the Heat will head into the offseason armed with plenty of flexibility. However, Miami’s projected cap space could get chewed up quickly if the team intends to bring back both Dwyane Wade and Hassan Whiteside, not to mention veteran free agents like Joe Johnson and Luol Deng. Wade is coming off a $20MM salary, and Whiteside looks like a good bet to earn something in that neighborhood too, after making the minimum this past season. There is expected to be “considerable debate” within the organization over whether Whiteside will get a max offer from Miami.
Complicating matters for the Heat are Chris Bosh‘s health issues — while the club would love to have Bosh get medical clearance to return to the court, there’s a chance that won’t happen, and Miami wouldn’t be able to remove his $23.7MM+ cap hit from its books until February 2017 at the earliest. South Beach is always a popular free agent destination, but if the Heat can’t land a marquee player like Kevin Durant, the team will have to be careful about how it spreads around its available money.
See how Miami’s cap situation looks for 2016/17 as Hoops Rumors continues its offseason salary cap digest series.
Guaranteed Salary
- Chris Bosh ($23,741,060)
- Goran Dragic ($15,891,725)
- Josh McRoberts ($5,782,450)
- Justise Winslow ($2,593,440)
- Briante Weber ($218,659) — Partial guarantee; non-guaranteed portion listed below
- Total: $48,227,334
Player Options
- None
Team Options
- None
Non-Guaranteed Salary
- Josh Richardson ($874,636)
- Briante Weber ($655,977) — Partial guarantee; guaranteed portion listed above
- Total: $1,530,613
Restricted Free Agents (Qualifying Offers/Cap Holds)
- Tyler Johnson ($1,180,431/$1,180,431)
Unrestricted Free Agents (Cap Holds)
- Dwyane Wade ($30,000,000)
- Luol Deng ($13,197,096)
- Udonis Haslem ($5,424,386)
- Gerald Green ($980,431)
- Joe Johnson ($980,431)
- Amar’e Stoudemire ($980,431)
- Hassan Whiteside ($980,431)
- Dorell Wright ($980,431)
- Total: $53,523,637
Projected Salary Cap: $92,000,000
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Bottom line: Heat have to move McRoberts, and even then, there isn’t much they can do to keep their pieces and/or add to the group unless certain guys take less money…they could explore moving Dragic, depending on what is available
It’s going to be an intriguing offseason for the Heat, who have so many free agents. Unless they can pull off another LeBron-style coup, they seem headed in the wrong direction.
…headed in the wrong direction??? Losing the top scorer on your team for the last 3 months of the season and still finishing third in your conference is NOT moving in the wrong direction. Losing your defensive anchor, arguably the best post defender in the league, in Game 3 of a playoff series, and still pushing to a Game 7, Is NOT heading in the wrong direction.
Trust Pat to find a way, he has a pretty good track record of assembling a competitive team, unlike say…..the media’s darling that is running the Knicks organization further into the ground.
Bosh’s health is the question here. That will determine how the Heat move forward, but they will move forward.