Gabe Vincent, Max Strus are great fits on new paths. They can all thank the Miami Heat
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There is such a thing as a “Cleveland accent.”
There are proper, linguist-written descriptions of it online, and you’re welcome to look them up, but practically, when we say “car” or “parking,” for example, it sounds like we stuffed a few “H’s” and “Y’s” into the middle and maybe another “R” or two.
It’s slightly different, but not far off from the way people sound from Detroit and Chicago, which is where Max Strus comes into this.
Strus was born in 1996 and raised in Hickory Hills, Ill., about 17 miles southwest of Chicago. He went to high school there and college near there. First to a Division II school called Lewis University, about 17 miles farther from Chicago than Hickory Hills, and then, after he got too good to stay at Lewis, finished his collegiate career at DePaul, which we all know is in the city.
Strus definitely speaks with that Midwestern … what’s the word? It’s not a “twang,” but whatever it is, it’s an accent full of piles of snow and whipping winds off a frozen lake. It’s scraping your windshield to get to school or to your delivery route in the morning. It’s shuttered factories and gorgeous summers and living and dying with the local sports teams.
Strus is going to fit in beautifully in Cleveland.
Gabe Vincent, meanwhile, sometimes goes by Nnamdi, his middle name and an ode to his Nigerian roots. The first moment any of us really had where we thought, “Wait a minute, Gabe Vincent is pretty good,” was when he was Nnamdi, playing point guard for the Nigerian national team, beating up on Team USA in a sterling exhibition season for the Nigerians in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
But Vincent is a California kid. He was born in Modesto, grew up in Stockton and played his college basketball at UC Santa Barbara — about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
So before we even get into the generational wealth these two players, Strus and Vincent, entered into this weekend, they found their way to teams that, OK, maybe aren’t quite “home,” but close enough. Vincent probably can’t believe he’s about to be a Laker, and Strus, who actually did play two games once for the hometown Chicago Bulls, is going to a city where he will immediately identify with most of the people screaming their heads off for him in the building.
Then, there is the kind of money and job security Strus and Vincent received, which doesn’t usually go to two people who take their path to make the NBA.
If you watched 10 minutes of the five NBA Finals games last month, you know neither Strus nor Vincent was drafted. Forget about falling out of the lottery or even out of the first round. Over two summers, starting with Vincent for the 2018 draft and Strus in 2019, the two of them were skipped over a combined 120 times (by 30 teams making picks in two rounds).
And on Friday, the Lakers agreed to a three-year, $33 million contract with Vincent, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported. Strus, meanwhile, agreed to a four-year, $63 million extension with the Cavaliers after they acquired him in a three-team trade, a league source confirmed to The Athletic.
Both Vincent and Strus signed with teams after their draft years and were waived. They toiled in the G League. Now they’ll both play on eight-figure contracts with teams that were so impressed by them and so in need of their services that they were going to make sure to outbid the organization that trained both players — the Miami Heat.
Vincent’s and Strus’ free-agency stories are so similar, not only because of their personal backgrounds, but because of their shared experience as teammates.
“Heat Culture,” you’ve heard of it, will live on because Pat Riley is still president and Erik Spoelstra is still the coach there. They are founder and caretaker, respectively. But Miami probably just lost two of the three players on its roster who most embody what “Heat Culture” is supposed to be.
Jimmy Butler is about a half participant. He fits the gritty, tough, win ugly in the face of long odds part of the culture, but not all of it. The rules for him are not the same as they are with other Heat players. He is not held to account the same way others are. Demands of his time are not as extended.
Vincent and Strus are two of the truest “Heat Culture” guys (Bam Adebayo is a third) because, in addition to the hard-nosed, defense-first, gnarly players they are — and they were available for every interview request (among other accountability measures) — they worked through the Heat’s player development system to become great.
Miami is unquestionably the NBA’s crown jewel of player development, with a long track record of identifying players other ignore and getting the most out of them. Vincent and Strus are shining examples.
Vincent was with the Heat for nine games in the 2019-20 season and accompanied them to the NBA Bubble. He played exactly 15 seconds in one playoff game that year but toiled endlessly off to the side at practice with Heat assistants each and every day in the sweltering Orlando heat. He appeared in 50 games the following season, and then, after his breakout summer with the Nigerians, returned to Miami as the Heat’s backup point guard, which meant a number of starting opportunities because of Kyle Lowry’s health. Vincent was supposed to be the backup again this past season and was, until Lowry missed a month with a leg injury. When he returned, Spoelstra chose to stick with Vincent as his starter all the way through the NBA Finals.
Strus was on a two-way contract and appeared in just 39 NBA games in 2021 with the Heat. He was a backup for most of the next season until, in a lineup shuffle necessitated by Duncan Robinson’s shooting slump, Spoelstra turned to Strus to start at the two guard for the stretch run and playoffs in 2022 — which went all the way to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. The Heat chose to turn 2022 Sixth Man of the Year, Tyler Herro, into a starter for this past season, so Strus was back on the bench … until Herro broke his hand in the first playoff game, and Strus was Spoelstra’s starter through the finals.
Neither player was particularly strong in the finals, by the way. Strus averaged 5.8 points and shot 23 percent from the field (18 percent from 3) in the Heat’s five-game loss to Denver. Vincent was better (11.4 points, 33 percent from deep) but was dominated in head-to-head play by the Nuggets’ Jamal Murray.
Thinking about Vincent headed to the Lakers, to play with LeBron James, brought to my mind, if only for a moment, Kyrie Irving. LeBron and Kyrie, champions together in Cleveland, made it abundantly clear before and after the February trade deadline, when Brooklyn traded Irving to Dallas, that they wanted to reunite. James may not have charged into Rob Pelinka’s office, slammed his massive hand on the desk and demanded Irving, but was so public about his desire that the message could not have been clearer.
This is, in essence, the first time the Lakers have flatly told LeBron “no” in his five years in Los Angeles. James wasn’t, like, the biggest Luke Walton guy … gone after one season. James wanted Anthony Davis as his co-star, done, massive trade. James wanted Russell Westbrook, rather than the deal for more versatile players and better shooters Pelinka had lined up in the summer of 2021, poof, Westbrook became a Laker. James wanted Westbrook GONE … Pelinka made him wait a little longer than perhaps James was comfortable with, but at this last trade deadline, Pelinka remade the Lakers on the fly, moving Westbrook and Patrick Beverley for a complement of competent, better-fitting role players. The Lakers went from 13th place to the Western Conference finals.
The Lakers and LeBron have formed a good partnership that has mostly worked well for both sides, with some bad luck (and one bad decision) along the way. When it came to Irving, though, the Lakers’ front office was never interested, trading for D’Angelo Russell three days after Irving’s deal to Dallas. Even if James, at age 38, is a minimal flight risk over the last few years of his career, the Lakers were not about to risk a scenario where James leaves and Irving, unhappy, was still under contract.
Instead, they went the steady, understated route with Vincent. James will love playing with him. LeBron’s formative NBA years were spent not in Cleveland, but on the Heat, where Riley and Spoelstra helped him understand the things he didn’t know about being a pro. When James left Miami, he brought with him Riley’s sayings and the Heat’s general philosophy of how to practice, how to conduct himself in public and how to remain dedicated to winning.
Vincent only knows the Heat way. Beyond that, Vincent averaged a better than 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio, and he is a stout defender despite his 6-foot-2 frame. Vincent is not afraid of taking a big shot but plays the right way, moves the ball and does not need help on defense. He’ll likely back up Russell, who’s returning to L.A. on a two-year deal, but however playing time shakes out Vincent can help facilitate the Lakers offense from the top and make it so James does not have nearly as much responsibility to initiate the offense, during the regular season anyway.
James adored playing with Matthew Dellavedova in Cleveland, who shared many of the same characteristics. History will probably look back at Vincent as the better player over Delly after both are finished in the NBA.
Strus, meanwhile, is the piece the Cavs knew they didn’t have going into the 2023 playoffs. They didn’t make it out of the first round because of some deficiencies they either didn’t know about or were hoping the Knicks didn’t notice in their frontcourt. Donovan Mitchell could’ve played better, but Cleveland went the whole season without that wing who could shoot 3s and play a little defense.
Strus is not perfect, as his finals numbers indicate. He has a tendency to be streaky. But he is “ignitable,” to borrow Spoelstra’s word, and in 2021-22, he shot 41 percent from 3-point range. He can do enough at both ends to stand in as the missing piece the Cavs knew they needed to pair with Mitchell, Darius Garland and Evan Mobley. Strus stands to see much more room to shoot in Cleveland than he had in Miami, where the top two offensive stars (Butler, Adebayo) were both dangerous in the midrange or closer but never from the outside.
Strus is also headed to a team that now has no players on it who have gone to a finals, other than him. Kevin Love was the last player on the roster from the 2016 title team. Cedi Osman, who was in the trade for Strus, was the last from Cleveland’s last finals team in 2018. Even Mitchell, a bona fide star, hasn’t gotten past the second round.
The influx of Miami professionalism in Cleveland in 2014, not only from LeBron, but from James Jones and Mike Miller, helped chart a glorious path for the Cavs of last decade. Expecting the same from Strus may be a bit of a stretch, but Cleveland had again built a young and talented team that arguably lacked a little discipline and toughness.
Strus provides those things without being over the top about it.
Both Vincent and Strus, again, have their limitations. They were overlooked for a reason, and neither has ever been a full-time starter for more than a couple of months. Both players have more to prove now, and if they get back to a finals, will try to do better than what they could muster for the Heat.
But Vincent and Strus are also very easy to root for, align with the philosophies of the franchises who are paying them handsomely … and they’re Culture guys.
(Top photo of Gabe Vincent and Max Strus: Stephen Lew / USA Today)
