MIAMI — By week’s end, a pair of NBA Finals starters for the Miami Heat might be former members of the Miami Heat.
It is a potential decision that also could be in the Heat’s best long-term interests.
For all Max Strus and Gabe Vincent accomplished in helping deliver the Heat within three victories of a championship, both also effectively were placeholders.
Strus for sidelined Tyler Herro.
Vincent as Kyle Lowry worked back from midseason knee pain.
Both filled in admirably, raised their profiles ahead of Friday’s start of free agency.
Both merited the right to seek far bigger money than last season’s minimum salaries.
Both, as older neophytes, each at 27, earned the opportunity to secure long-term contracts.
But the rules of the game have changed, at least the rules of the salary cap, under the new collective-bargaining agreement that goes into place Saturday.
This no longer can be doing right by those who hustle, ooze culture, sacrifice. Tyler Johnson, in effect, has left the building.
Under the NBA’s new payroll dynamic, you’re either a leading man or you get out of the way on the salary scale.
For the Heat, the team’s decisions over the last three years have been to cast Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Herro as the leading men.
They got paid. Adebayo in November 2020 to a five-year, $163 million extension. Butler in August 2021 to a four-year, $184 million extension. And Herro in October to a four-year, $130 million extension that kicks in next season.
Those are the deals you live with, or the deals you trade for other teams’ leading men.
But the next tier, even under the previous collective-bargaining agreement, is where you can wind up hamstrung.
And for the Heat, it wasn’t just Tyler Johnson. It also was James Johnson. And Dion Waiters.
That’s not to say that Vincent and Strus didn’t provide more context than each of those three. They did.
But there also is the context of Lowry being under contract next season for $29.7 million, available to step back in for Vincent.
The context of Duncan Robinson being under contract next season for $18.2 million, plus two additional seasons, available to reclaim what Strus had seized.
Is it fair that Vincent or Strus could wind up having to relocate because of perceived Heat mistakes with Lowry or Robinson? No.
But the NBA isn’t always a meritocracy. Chasing bad money with good money has its limits.
So, again, consider, even without grandeur visions of a trade for Damian Lillard or something similar, the potential roles next season for Vincent and Strus.
Without the two, the Heat could still field a starting lineup of Adebayo, Butler, Herro, Lowry and Caleb Martin.
And still have a bench featuring Robinson, Kevin Love, Haywood Highsmith, Jaime Jaquez, Nikola Jovic and NBA veterans filling out the final four roster spots.
Yes, Butler will miss ample time next season, simply because he is Jimmy Butler and he can. Lowry no longer is a big-minutes starter, but as moments in the playoffs showed, he still can, when healthy, offer big moments.
And then consider something Heat president Pat Riley said at his season-ending wrap-up last week.
“If you take a look at all the rosters around the league,” he said, “they have the same issues that everybody else has when it comes to all the draconian rules that are coming in financially. So players might be more readily available than they’ve ever been because of that.”
Translation (or at least the one that fits this context): Players who previously might have merited more, well could be available for the minimum starting Friday.
As it is, if the Heat do not bring back Strus and Vincent and instead fill out the roster with four minimum salaries, they could remain, barely, under the highly punitive second luxury-tax apron in 2023-24.
General manager Andy Elisburg appears capable of threading that needle.
As for the emotional attachment to Strus and Vincent — and such attachment is merited, considering both stood as every-last-breath players at this past season’s moments of truth — let’s not confuse that with irreplaceable.
Among options who potentially could be brought in at the minimum in place of Vincent could be Cory Joseph, Kendrick Nunn, Goran Dragic, Derrick Rose, Aaron Holiday, George Hill, Frank Ntilikina, or, perhaps late in the free agency, if money dries up elsewhere, Russell Westbrook.
Among those who could be added at the minimum in place of Strus are impending free agents Justin Holiday, Javonte Green, Will Barton, Shake Milton, Terrence Ross, Frank Kaminsky, Danny Green, Derrick Jones Jr., Juan Toscano-Anderson, Svi Mykhailiuk, Rodney McGruder, Wesley Matthews or an unlikely reunion with Justise Winslow.
There was a time when the Heat’s priority was to take care of their own. That was when James Johnson, Tyler Johnson, Waiters and Robinson were rewarded for productivity and loyalty.
Now the rules of the workplace have changed.
That change could well lead to changes of address for Vincent and Strus, through absolutely no fault of their own.
