While the Miami Heat didn’t have an active offseason from a transactional perspective, one of the bigger questions at the time was which of their free agents would they retain.
The Heat ultimately re-signed Kevin Love to a two-year, $8 million deal, while bringing back Haywood Highsmith to a two-year, $10.8 million deal.
Zooming out nearly six months later, Love, 36, hasn’t appeared in 14 of the team’s 29 games (personal reasons, DNP-CDs), and hasn’t quite been impactful when he has been on the floor. Highsmith, on the other hand, is experiencing the best season of his career as arguably the team’s most impactful 3-and-D wing.
In 27 games (20 starts), he’s averaging 6.9 points and 3.1 rebounds on a career-best 48.2 percent shooting, including 43.9 percent from 3-point range, where he takes nearly 62 percent of his attempts. His 61.0 effective field-goal percentage is nearly three percentage points higher than his previous career mark while his 61.9 true-shooting percentage is 3.2 points better.
Highsmith’s play to begin the 2024-25 season has justified that his well-deserved contract looks like a bargain.
His $5.2 million cap hit for the 2024-25 season accounts for just 3.7 percent of the cap. Next year, his $5.6 million cap hit accounts for 3.63 percent of the projected cap, which we won’t officially know until next June.
The NBA is a wings league, where the 3-and-D prototype is of the utmost importance within roster building. It’s difficult to win in today’s NBA with one-way players.
Is Highsmith the perfect ballhandler? Playmaker? Second-side creator? Not by any means. But it’s difficult to currently justify Highsmith being classified as just a one-way player, even though he’s still significantly fine-tuning one side of his game.
With Dru Smith done for the season, Highsmith is arguably the Heat’s best point-of-attack defender. Though he can defend at least 2-3 positions at an above-average level. He’s also one of their more active rebounders and knows how to roam the baseline as well as anyone.
While the Miami Heat have been consistently inconsistent, Highsmith’s consistent shooting and defense have been one of the team’s bright spots. And the more he continues to perform well with his opportunity, the more this deal is going to continue looking like a bargain.
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Highsmith has the potential to be a very good two-way player that can routinely score 12-18 points a game. He alone can unleash that player. He has to learn how to turn that switch on and be as aggressive on the offensive side as he is on the defensive. With his corner 3, if he was on a team that passed and spread the ball more (Denver, Memphis, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, etc.,) he would probably get more wide open 3’s, which would also open up his inside game.