Miami Heat churning through workouts ahead of NBA draft

MIAMI – The workouts again are stealth, or at least as close as a team can come amid social media and agents with agendas.

So, yes, there already are voluminous lists of players the Miami Heat have worked out ahead of their potential selections in next week’s NBA draft, at the moment holding picks Nos. 15 and 43.

But for those who choose to ferret, there also comes a warning from Adam Simon, the Heat’s vice president of basketball operations and assistant general manager, who oversees the team’s draft.

So how influential in the ultimate decision are these workouts that have had players parading through Kaseya Center?

“I think it’s a very small percentage,” Simon said this week. “If you put your weight into just a workout, you could easily be putting too much weight into thinking that those are the player’s ultimate strengths or ultimate weaknesses.”

While the workouts are basketball, they in almost no way resemble NBA basketball.

By rule, they can’t.

“We’re not playing five-on-five,” Simon said. “It’s a three-on-three. And sometimes it’s two-on-two. And sometimes it’s one-on-none.”

Yet as much as teams downplay the workouts, they are part of an unceasing grind leading to draft night, which this year for the first time actually will be draft nights, with the first round next Wednesday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the second round next Thursday in New York at ESPN’s studios.

So for as much as is made about the workouts, Simon said the true advantage is the facetime, something beyond the speed-dating setting of the interviews at last month’s draft combine in Chicago.