How did undrafted players lead the Miami Heat to the NBA Finals?
The Miami Heat made it to the NBA Finals and it is safe to say, that nobody saw that coming. Entering the playoffs, the Heat were actually the eight seeded team on the playoff bracket, and they beat the odds on favorite to win the NBA title in the Milwaukee Bucks. In fact, it was only the fifth time in NBA history an 8 seed had made it out of the first round, let alone to make it one game away from the Eastern Conference Finals. The truth is that the Heat aren’t just overachievers in the playoffs, they are a team filled with NBA rejects, the type of guys that nobody else wanted. Their success in this NBA playoffs proves, that they really have the best scouting department in the NBA, because they built a winner with half of their roster as entirely undrafted players!
Jimmy Butler was never supposed to be a superstar
Historically no NBA team since 1990 has made the NBA Finals without at least one future hall of fame player on their team. The Miami Heat are no exception, because Jimmy Butler is the leader of the Heat, and after taking them to the finals in the bubble, he proved this season that it is not a fluke. But Jimmy Butler was never supposed to be an NBA superstar. He was actually the last pick of the first round by the Chicago Bulls and played his way into becoming an All Star within four years. To clarify he was traded to the Timberwolves and they pretended he was a cancer to the team, and later the 76ers chose to pay Ben Simmons instead of him. Which is a decision that had to have gotten somebody fired. So he chose the Miami Heat in free agency, and hasn’t looked back ever since.
At the end of the first round, you are not supposed to get an All Star. In fact, of all the 30th picks who were drafted in the five years before Jimmy Butler, not one of them palyed more than four seasons in the NBA. And the closest thing we have ever seen to an All star since is Desmond Bane. Yet the Bulls, Wolves, and 76ers gave him away for pennies on the dollar.
The Heat’s best high school basketball players don’t even play
The top ranked basketball recruits out of high school, are normally the ones who go on to dominate in the NBA. That was true before this year, for most of the Heat roster. However in the 2023 playoffs, it has been their unranked, and undrafted players who have taken center stage. The only players on the Heat roster who were ranked among the top 60 high school recruits in their recruiting class, are Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Kevin Love, Kyle Lowry, and Cody Zeller. Only Bam Adebayo started every playoff game. Kevin Love started in most of them but averaged fewer than 20 minutes per game when he did, and Kyle Lowry played in each game but came off the bench in all but one. Tyler Herro was hurt for almost the entirety of the playoffs, and Cody Zeller averages fewer than 10 minutes per game. This means every other NBA player on their team was not even supposed to make it to the league according to the scouts.
The Miami Heat have a bunch of undrafted players
Amongst the remainder of the Heat roster, are 9 undrafted players, 7 of them were part of the team’s playoff rotation. The Heat literally found players that no team wanted and shaped them into key contributors for a deep playoff run. Amongst those 7 players, only Duncan Robinson was a part of the Heat rotation this year and formerly played for a power 5 conference team at Michigan in college. But he famously started off his basketball career in NCAA Division 3 and worked his way up to becoming a three point specialist in the NBA! Udonis Haslem is the other player, but he is essentially the grandfather figure for the Miami Heat and he only played 2 minutes during the Heat’s playoff run.
The Heat found each of their other rotation players from places that nobody really bothers to look. Gabe Vincent, Caleb Martin, Max Strus, and Omer Yurtseven are all formerly players from smaller conference teams in the NCAA D1. But Vincent, Martin, and Strus were on the court during the biggest moments of most Heat playoff games. Haywood Highsmith also played 10 minutes per game, the same amount as Cody Zeller, yet he was formerly an NCAA division 2 player at Wheeling University where he became the national player of the year at that level.
The Bottom Line
The truth is that the NBA draft is just a bunch of general managers rolling dice on players whom they hope will make it in the league. The Miami Heat don’t like to gamble, they have a clear system to evaluate players who are working their way up the ranks of the G league. Once a player has proven he can fill a role for the Heat, they let him do exactly that, playing against the NBA’s best. The Heat weren’t supposed to make the Eastern Conference Finals. In fact they shouldn’t have made it out of the first round. Beyond that, most NBA teams wouldn’t even know what to do with half of the players on their team.
Erik Spoelstra is the Miami Heat’s championship winning coach, yet he started off not as a former player, but as the video film coordinator for the team. Coach Spoelstra knows what it means to be underrated, and after coaching the LeBron led Heat to two titles, he has earned our respect. Which is probably why he looks for players who are just like him, underrated and overlooked to play for his team, because they are willing to do whatever it takes to win. Even without all the accolades, recruitment rankings, and draft stock behind them, their results speak for themselves. Besides for all the team’s the Heat eliminated, the joke is actually on them, because they could have had almost any one of their players if they really wanted to by just calling their name at any point during the NBA draft.
KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.
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