Pat Riley made one thing clear during his end of season press conference: he was prioritizing health and availability in roster decisions moving forward.
The moves that followed shortly after lined up to that new proposed strategy that Riley iterated. The first order of business was landing the whale in Giannis Antetokounmpo. In doing so, they traded away Tyler Herro in the deal and let Norman Powell walk in free agency. Both players were key pieces on this Heat roster heading into last season, but each of their 2025-26 seasons were inconsistent availability wise.
Herro appeared in a career-low 33 games, as Powell’s hot start to the year slowed down in the second half— finishing with an underwhelming 58 games played in the process.
Antetokounmpo’s 36 games played was a different circumstance. He suffered with a lingering calf issue last season, but also dealt with never-ending trade rumors on a non-playoff Milwaukee Bucks team that shut him down to prioritize tanking for a draft pick. In the two seasons prior, the new Heat superstar appeared in 67 and 73 games, respectively.
The Miami Heat’s new additions have all been healthy in recent years.
Then the other new offseason rotation additions in Tim Hardaway Jr., Klay Thompson and Bobby Portis all come into the fold with the same track record of remaining healthy. Hardaway appeared in 80 games for the Denver Nuggets last season, even in his age-33 campaign, along with 71+ games in each of the previous three years.
Thompson, outside of suffering a serious achilles injury seven years ago with the Golden State Warriors, has been reliable for most of his entire Hall of Fame career. In recent years, Thompson has averaged 72 games played over the past four seasons. Even in a year that the Dallas Mavericks limited his role this past campaign, he still found a way to appear in 69 games.
Lastly, Portis has averaged 67 games played this past four years, too. And then looking at the current Heat starters— Davion Mitchell, Andrew Wiggins and Bam Adebayo have all been reliable. All three played in 68-73 games in 2025-26 for Miami.
This isn’t all to say that players can’t and/or shouldn’t miss any games, because that’s not realistic in today’s vigorous NBA. But if the core pieces and starters can net 65+ games at minimum, that’s a good base to build cohesion properly— something that Herro and Powell failed to do last season with their injury woes.
It’s a noticeable trend in these roster decisions, and one that Riley proclaimed publicly. He wants to see a healthy Heat team for an entire duration of a regular season and a potential deep playoff run, even if players aren’t at 100%.
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I keep seeing another non starter prediction that the Heat will add Love with the 15th spot. Absolutely hell no! There is no valid argument that can justify that. If they want a ‘mentor’ for Bam and Giannis (and neither needs one imo), hire him as an assistant coach or other non player position.
Maybe his buddy LeBron can get Sixers to sign him. Already over our limit on old guys.
Pretty standard management speak from Riley IMO, in any job the #1 focus from management is on employee availability. What’s most different about this team from last year is the addition of a MVP talent and the reshaping of the roster from having one way offense players as main starters to further down the rotation in supporting roles.
Yes, that’s exactly how I see it too. Availability is a big deal. Availability with high skills is an even bigger deal.
True, but high skills and no availability has been an ongoing problem.
The most important ability is availability. I read that Warriors might be looking at trading quitter to Milwaukee for Turner and others.Wouldn’t that be ironic.
Milwaukee Heat expendables
I suspect those former Heaters wouldn’t be too thrilled with that possibility. They have ‘been there, done that’.
Oladipo is quitter for some Indiana fans and loved here, it’s all relative. Butler gave the Heat amazing years, just had a contract dispute with the front office that wasn’t resolvable, and both sides won in the trade to GSW. I’m hoping Butler comes back strong, he’s a player with a competitive level unlike most in the NBA.
That was the best part of having Butler. Other teams wanted to win. Jimmy expected to win. When the game was close, Jimmy won more than his fair share.
He gave the rest of the team belief, that mentality is the hardest/rarest thing to find in a player. That’s the one reason I hesitate comparing Larsson to Butler right now, because otherwise positionally they are identical, and their games have a lot in common.
That’s over with. Now he’s sitting back collecting his big fat check for doing nothing but researching which team he is going to fleece next. So many choices.
That is true for this past his prime, mercenary version of Jimmy. He wants much more pay than he’s worth these days. But, when he was Himmy, we had a player who carried us far beyond what the rest of our roster’s talent level was
Butler doesn’t want to win any more than Giannis. The difference is Giannis knows how to do it.
My ex-wife gave me amazing years (about 2). We just had a personal dispute that wasn’t resolvable. I moved out and never looked back. We both won. She got the house and I got to get tf outa there. I’m now happily remarried. She’s still as miserable as she was the day she realized she had lost the best thing she ever had. (She never did remarry). The end.
Good story. Thanks for sharing. I had a similar experience. I tried to stay for the kids, as I came from a divorced family and knew well of the effects. It turned out my ex did me a favor and I found true love and am happily remarried now. Some things work out for the best.
You live, you learn and you evolve. You learn to avoid making the same mistakes…over and over again. I feel blessed meeting my soulmate. She motivates me to make a serious effort to be the best version of myself, daily.
I will be watching the Bucks with great interest. I’m hoping they do well.
Herro is made of glass