Hollinger: How the Miami Heat have crushed it finding undrafted talent

DENVER — Hey, did you know the Heat have several undrafted players? I know this story hasn’t been covered much lately, but apparently, it’s true.

Actually, it’s more true than even the stories would suggest: While five undrafted Miami players have been part of the rotation during the Eastern Conference and NBA Finals — Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent, Max Strus, Duncan Robinson, and Haywood Highsmith — the Heat also have two other undrafted roster players (Udonis Haslem and Ömer Yurtseven) as well as two undrafted two-ways (Orlando Robinson and Jamal Cain), for a total of nine undrafted players on the roster of an NBA finalist.

The story gets better from there. Each of the five who are contributing to these finals was in the G League in either 2018 or 2019, and all except Robinson passed through two-way purgatory at some point in their journey before becoming fully fledged roster players in Miami.

Their ability to grind their way into becoming NBA rotation players (or more, as we’ll discuss in a bit) has inspired numerous #HeatCulture memes. I don’t want to diminish that aspect of it, but focusing on the locker room and development culture once they get to Miami misses an even bigger element: the ability of the organization to identify and sign these players in the first place.

The player development part can only happen because the front office keeps finding talent left by the side of the road, over and over and over again. Forget #HeatCulture; this is more like #HeatVultures.

Suffice it to say that the successes of these players were not pre-ordained. For instance, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t recognize the significance of the weekend of Dec. 19, 2019, in Miami Heat history.

There, in a makeshift arena in a convention hall in Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, in front of no fans whatsoever but wall-to-wall NBA scouts, four of Miami’s future NBA finalists would do battle at the G League Showcase: Highsmith of the Delaware Blue Coats, Strus of the Windy City Bulls, Vincent of the Stockton Kings and Martin of the Greensboro Swarm.

You’ll note that not only were these guys not notable players at the time, but also they weren’t in Miami’s system. Indeed, one of the huge (and somewhat ironic) success stories behind the Miami Minimums has been the front office’s willingness to go outside its own organization for player talent.

It’s not like Miami’s history with two-ways and minimum guys is littered with bombs and the Heat just got lucky on a few. This is a veteran team that has been in win-now mode for several years; some seasons that’s worked out better than others, but what it’s meant in all of them is that relatively few roster spots were available for player development gambles — particularly with tax considerations often forcing them to keep just 14 players.

Instead, it’s a story of an organization set up to identify free talent early and quickly pounce when the opportunity becomes available.

---

Let’s backtrack a bit. To say these players weren’t obvious choices is the epitome of understatement. Viewers that weekend in Vegas in 2019 would have had a tough time discerning that future Heat quartet destined for glory. Scattered in one-horse towns across America, each had gone undrafted, and only Martin had signed an NBA contract.

For instance, Highsmith’s team played Vincent’s in one of the first games of the weekend; Vincent scored five points on 2-of-11 shooting, and Highsmith scored seven. They were non-factors in a 127-120 game where 11 players scored in double figures; three years later, only two other players from that game were still in the NBA (Shake Milton and Wenyen Gabriel).

As for Strus, he scored 11 points in his team’s first game that weekend and tore his ACL in the second, leading to his release from a two-way with Chicago and the eventual offseason ride that landed him in Miami. Martin, on assignment from Charlotte, shot 6 of 17 in the first game and made one of his nine 3-point attempts on the weekend.

Fast forward three years, and it’s a different world. Those four players and Robinson combined for 43 points in Game 1 and 50 in Game 2 against Denver. In the Heat’s Game 2 comeback win, Vincent was Miami’s high scorer with 23 points and was a game-high plus-22. Robinson scored 10 points in the fourth quarter, including a key five-point possession that ignited Miami’s rally. Strus hit four 3-pointers in the first quarter and finished with 14 points and six assists. Martin, battling illness, still knocked down a crucial fourth-quarter 3 to continue his torrid postseason shooting run. And Highsmith, fresh off his energizing 18-point performance in Game 1, filled in another solid six minutes at the defensive end.

All told, Miami got 51 points from its four “names” — Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Kyle Lowry and the injured Tyler Herro — and it got 60 points from six players it originally signed off the scrap heap (including Kevin Love and Cody Zeller).

---

So … how’d the Heat hit on all these guys?

Let’s start with team president Pat Riley and hit the wayback machine. Pulling players off the scrap heap has been a core tenet of his going back to his days with the Knicks, where he signed players such as John Starks and Anthony Mason out of the Continental Basketball Association (back in the halcyon days when a reference to “the CBA” had nothing to do with the cap).

Riley had a strong belief that so-called street free agents — unsigned, undrafted players available on minimum contracts — could become rotation-level additions even to elite teams. (This is also tied into a related tenet of most of Riley’s teams, which was that future draft picks weren’t exactly sacrosanct in trades, because he could find cheap talent outside the draft.)

That belief came with Riley to Miami and played a big role in previous generations of Heat teams, most notably with Haslem but also with 1990s predecessors such as Ike Austin, Keith Askins and Anthony Carter.

That said, it was an easier time for talent poaching then, with no two-ways and 12-man rosters. Accomplishing the same thing with 15-man rosters and two two-ways is something else entirely. Do the math: That’s 30 teams with five extra roster spots. Relative to the NBA of a decade ago or further, the first 150 players on your target list are unlikely to be available, having already been signed by other teams.

Yet, despite the greatly increased degree of difficulty (one that is likely to increase next year with the addition of a third two-way), Miami has gone to another level in identifying free talent, and especially in finding it in-season.

Again, the willingness to look outside the organization and pounce is instructive. Notably, four current Heat players were in-season signings of unattached G League players:

• Vincent was signed to a two-way in January 2020 — a quiet footnote to Miami’s eventual finals run that season — after the Heat pivoted from their original two-way signees. Vincent had struggled in his first year in the G League but was just starting to blow up in his second campaign when the Heat pounced; right after that dud G League Showcase came in front of half the league, Vincent had a 35-point outburst with nine made 3s. Two weeks later, he was in Miami on a two-way.
• Highsmith was in his third season in Delaware when the Heat inked him to a roster exemption two-way while COVID-19 was ravaging the league late in 2021. Miami liked him enough to bring him back once it cleared a roster spot by trading draft bust KZ Okpala. Highsmith, a Division II player who at the time was already 25 and had just five career NBA games under his belt, ended up on the podium after Game 1 of the finals.
• Robinson was an in-house project after going undrafted at Michigan, playing for the Heat’s G League team in Sioux Falls. But he wasn’t under contract, and any team in the league could have signed him in 2018-19. Miami inked him and another undrafted Heat hero of yore, Kendrick Nunn, on the final day of the season; in those 24 hours, Miami got more out of G League call-ups than virtually any other team in the last decade.
• Backup big man Yurtseven, who has been injured most of this season but could very well be the next Miami undrafted success story, had been playing for Oklahoma City in the truncated 2020-21 G League season. His campaign had been over for two months when the Heat signed him in May 2021, again on the last day of the season.

Similarly, Strus and Martin were offseason pickups but were additionally cases of Miami taking advantage of free talent:

• In the 2020 offseason after his ACL tear, Strus was originally committed to Boston on a two-way, but when the Celtics opted for Tacko Fall instead, Miami invited him to training camp, and he won out a competition with three other players for the Heat’s final two-way spot.
• Martin was waived by Charlotte after the 2020-21 season (even though his twin brother also played there. Awwwwkward.), despite a solid first two seasons and a team-friendly minimum contract. The Heat only had a two-way left to offer him, but their successes with players like Robinson (and Tyler Johnson, Rodney McGruder and Nunn before him) persuaded Martin to take the plunge with Miami.

You can notice some commonalities in all these decisions. Miami doesn’t have a huge front office relative to many of its peers, and at times, it can be an advantage when a team needs to huddle and move quickly. Riley is the overseer, but general manager Andy Elisburg is widely regarded as the best cap maneuverer in the league, and VP of basketball operations Adam Simon and scouting director Askins have keen eyes for available talent. Miami has other scouts, but that small circle, along with head coach Erik Spoelstra, is where the decisions happen. All four are in their forever-th season with the club, with that rare level of continuity gives Miami another advantage when it comes to moving quickly.

That isn’t worth much, however, without two other notable feats. First, Miami’s avoidance of Not Invented Here syndrome is truly impressive. While a couple of Heat success stories have come through their own G League program in Sioux Falls (most notably Robinson), that hasn’t blinded them to the fact that there are roughly 30 times as many players on other G League rosters as on their own. When the Heat had chances to bring in players such as Vincent, Nunn, Highsmith or Yurtseven in-season off other team’s G League rosters, they didn’t hesitate.

The second part of that is Miami’s willingness to move off back-end roster players and look in a different direction in-season when things haven’t gone as they’d hoped. Part of using two-ways and back-end roster spots successfully is knowing when a move isn’t working out and moving on to the next candidate. Miami’s history shows it to be remarkably free of sacred cows; just in the last year, the Heat have cut loose five players from two-ways.

If there’s any bad news from the #HeatVultures success, it’s that they’re going to need to keep doing this. As it turns out, minimum contracts don’t last forever. Strus and Vincent are unrestricted free agents this summer as their cheap deals expire, and they’re about to get paaaaaid.

Strus had a BORD$ valuation of $11.2 million and Vincent $6.5 million at the end of the season; given what has transpired in the playoffs, both those numbers feel like the absolute floor. Martin and Robinson are on their second contacts in Miami already, but Martin in particular is likely due for another boost. Next summer he can opt out of a deal that pays him only $7.1 million for 2024-25.

Miami is already $11 million over next season’s projected luxury-tax threshold with only nine players under contract; just adding minimums to that group will push the Heat past the punitive second apron. Needless to say, there isn’t much wiggle room to re-sign Strus or Vincent on top of that.

The good news is that Miami has open roster spots coming its way and a staff that has shown it’s capable of combing the minors for talent. In the last half decade, Miami has already twice pivoted from difficult-looking cap and draft-pick situations into NBA Finals appearances; yes, Jimmy and Bam and Spo were the most important features, but the team’s ability to turn minimum roster spots into plus rotation players was a massive accelerant.

It will be a challenge to keep it going, especially with other teams seeking to imitate Miami’s formula and a third two-way taking 30 more players out of circulation. But between their front-office continuity, quick-strike flexibility, willingness to go outside the organization and, finally, straight-up ability to evaluate talent, the #HeatVultures are well-positioned to keep crushing the league at acquiring undrafted talent.

---

Related reading

Amick: Why Miami’s Game 2 win left Nuggets looking nervous
Thompson: Bam Adebayo is shouldering heavy load fine so far
Vardon: Is ‘Playoff Jimmy’ a thing? Butler says no

Related listening

(Photo of Caleb Martin and Duncan Robinson: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)