Why Miami Matters
The Heat are (probably) not going to win the NBA title for a variety of reasons. But they are unlocking something useful for college basketball.
The Miami Heat are (probably) not going to win the NBA title.
As the No. 8 seed in the East—after losing to the Atlanta Dadgum Hawks in the Play-In, for crying out loud—this should not only have been self-evident but not worth talking about here in the second weekend of June. Someone should have sent the Heat off into vacation by now, but Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo bowed up against Giannis, Embiid and the Boston Celtics to win the East and send all three franchises into something of an existential crisis (in order: fired the coach, fired the coach, currently wavering on delivering a bag to Jaylen Brown).
Trailing 3-1 against the Denver Nuggets and demigod Nikola Jokic, the Heat’s margin for error has dropped to something less than a knife’s edge. Saying never against Playoff Jimmy Butler isn’t something I’m willing to do, but Jimmy is going to have to outperform even his usual heroics to pull this series out of the gutter.
Denver has lost once at home since the start of April; Miami is going to have to beat them twice in Denver to win a title. It’s that kind of problem.
Miami has done one thing to help change the math in the NBA though. Yes, stacking assets is cool and the Thunder might draft four Hall of Famers with their bounty of lottery picks both recently and in the future. But the Heat are using guys from DePaul and UC Santa Barbara to an effect that SO FAR transcends any Process-driven results that the “smart” teams are credited with pursuing with their asset collection, and that bodes well for the small-school, mid-major and undrafted dudes who have heard the same mantra for years: “If you can hoop, they’ll find you.”
The Heat are, for lack of a better phrase, finding y’all.
Now, it’s become a little too comfy for broadcasts to lean on Miami’s vast array of the undrafted and overlooked to position them as the ultimate underdog, and that isn’t completely true. Bam and Tyler Herro were lottery picks. Jimmy Butler was a late-first selection who also has a very good Hall of Fame argument at this point—color me shocked that NBA teams were wary of a hyper-competitive guy clearly unwilling to put up with anyone’s lazy bullshit, and color me absolutely flabbergasted that it took three other stops before that guy found a forever home within a culture of wholesale accountability. Gray-hairs Kevin Love and Kyle Lowry are multi-time All-Stars and former NBA champions. This ain’t a team full of nobodies; at least two of these guys are Hall of Famers and as many as four could get there by the time it’s all said and done.
But the other names, the one’s you're familiar with, they dominate some of the narrative.
Duncan Robinson, undrafted out of Michigan via Division III Williams.
Caleb Martin, undrafted out of Nevada and unwanted by the Charlotte dadgum Hornets, who kept his brother Cody on the roster and jettisoned Caleb.
Max Strus, undrafted out of DePaul via Division II Lewis and passed over by the Bulls and Celtics.
Gabe Vincent, undrafted out of UC Santa Barbara who was never even named First-Team All-Big West in college.
First, notice that both Strus and Robinson started at lower levels of the college basketball hierarchy; “if you can play, they’ll find you” doesn’t just apply to the pros. The transfer portal is made for people like Robinson and Strus, who performed Division I work at non-Division I schools and were able to parlay that into a move into Division I.
The trickle down comes to the schools themselves. It’s pretty handy to be able to advertise to a prospective recruit that you can go from UC Santa Barbara to the NBA Finals in just a few (not so) easy steps.
Or showcase some old-school pics from their time at Ye Olde Alma Mater.
Maybe that’s another day for a Michigan Man, but any school needing any edge they can find in the recruiting wars can do worse than having a distinguished alum performing well (or even just being on) basketball’s largest stage.
(Looking at you, DePaul.)
And every Robinson three or every game Martin steps up alongside Butler gives hope to every long-shot NBA hopeful, because they can see these aren’t players terribly different from themselves. Robinson and Strus are all-world shooters; Martin is the perfect size for the modern league. Vincent is one of the smartest players on the floor at all time. Do they check every box? Hell no! They’re short, or slow, or not blessed with great wingspan or whatever other hot topic du jour makes the draftniks swoon each June.
Martin and Strus were in the 2019 class that produced such amazing first-round picks Romeo Langford and Goga Bitadze.
Robinson and Vincent weren't taken the year before, but guys who looked the part—Marvin Bagley Jr., Mo Bamba, Kevin Knox II, Jerome Robinson—were lottery choices despite not giving much appearance to being able to play basketball. And this happens every. Single. Year.
If you want to know what makes college basketball the best, it’s that. It’s not watching the McDonald’s All-Americans who were blessed with enough talent to dominate the college game come in and do that; measuring them against future dentists isn’t indicative of anything, least of all future professional concerns. It’s the reason sickos like me watch UC Davis-UC Riverside and hope to find someone giving a professional performance in a decidedly unprofessional setting. It’s filing away a March Madness performance to remember when Caleb Martin is undrafted, or recalling a meaningless Michigan game when Jordan Poole didn’t have it but Duncan Robinson had flames shooting out of his head. It’s watching a little dude who’s smarter than everyone else on the floor and going, “Hmm. Feels a little Gabe Vincent-y.”
Assets are good. Necessary building blocks for success, and the Heat proved that. But stacking assets aren't the only way to build a contender, and the Heat are a shining example of that too.