Miami Heat:

Pat Riley is 74-years old and has no interest in rebuilding, so the Heat grabbed Jimmy Butler to add to their slew of vets with vague ball skills and no real structure beyond a bunch of guys who can kinda shoot and kinda score.

First things first, the Heat butchered Josh Richardson's deployment in the 2018-19 season.

If this was an experiment to find out if Richardson could be "the guy," it was a poorly designed one to say the least.

Richardson is obviously more suited to a support role, but still.

In his 2nd season, the Heat started force-feeding Richardson PnR possessions.

Despite never scoring higher than 0.80 PPP on individual PnR possessions, the Heat decided to make Richardson the focal point of their offense, with PnR being his most-used play-type.

The results were predictably bad. Richard had 719 possessions terminated in PnR, including his passes, yet scored only 0.81 PPP on the 393 possessions where he called his own number in PnR.

This scream Richardson would be best used as a secondary passer, like he had been.

In fact Richardson arguably took a step forward as an individual offensive player. Factoring out his PnR possessions, he had a PPPn of 1.06 on the season on 11.5 possessions a game.

This would've ranked 31st out of 108 players in the NBA with at least as many possessions as him.

Using Josh's artificially created struggles in PnR as a scapegoat, the Heat shipped the 26-year old and his $33 million 2 + 1 contract out, and brought 30-year old Jimmy Butler in on a $141 million, 3 + 1 contract.

This is indefensible, I don't care what seed they are this year.

This is even crazier, BECAUSE BUTLER HAS THE EXACT SAME ISSUE AS RICHARDSON IN PNR!! https://twitter.com/JosephGillMA/status/1174084010525495296

Teams get fixated on certain players and archetypes, thinking that they have to fulfill certain ones overwise they can't be contenders, but if the perceived problem with the Heat was PnR, then retain Richardson, and offer Tyus Jones a $45 million/4-year deal, then run it back.

This was so monumentally stupid.

If PnR was a problem, at least it was a cost-controlled one (with the except of Dragic).

The Heat instead decided that they needed a bigger name, and retained the same problem while increasing the money allocated towards it by 425%.

So bad.

Anyways, on to Butler.

The book is out on Butler, he'll assure that you're team isn't much worse than .500, and in the East he's probably good for about 48 wins with this cast.

He's also got a lot of miles on him, and is only going to get older. I can't get excited about this.

As far as the rest of the vets, Kelly Olynyk is by default somehow pretty much the only other vet the Heat can consistently count on every night, somehow, despite this being the 4th most expensive team in the NBA.

I don't consider Winslow a vet, but he'll also be mostly solid.

At this point, anybody who talks themselves into Dion Waiters as a net positive deserves what they get. In 7 years in the NBA, all Waiters has to show for it is about a month and a half of hot three-point shooting, and $65 million in contracts.

Owners pay off draft position.

With every passing year, it seems more inescapable that Goran Dragic was largely the conduit for an emerging analytical concept of spacing during his best years with the Suns.

Dragic's impact has never again been what it was with Channing Frye in 2013-14, despite a good 2016-17.

The one surefire good thing that the Heat did this summer was dump Hassan Whiteside. He will not be missed, and neither will his desire to flee from the rim and launch questionable three-pointers. At least Dion Waiters had some brief feedback loops of success with his chucking.

Bam Adebayo will continue to experience the reality of being an emerging potentially elite dive guy who has to play without much of a dynamic PnR threat, and is going to lose a few more possessions this year to Jimmy's hero-ball midranges. Very sad development this summer.

I'm starting to feel the same way about Tyler Herro as I did Devin Booker in the summer of 2016.

I'm more than cautiously optimistic, but I can't be all-in on a player who struggled to get downhill and all the way to the rim against college competition.

On one hand, he supplies a valuable skillset that the Heat need badly (how do you have the 4th highest payroll in 2019, and minimal shooting??), and he has already shown an ability to hit threes off the bounce.

But eventually, teams are just not going to retreat off the line.

I almost want to advocate for preemptive, selling-high Bam and Tyler Herro trades to get more draft picks to replenish the exhausted war chest.

Best case scenario, what is this team while they have Jimmy? 4, or 3 seeds who can't make the Conference Finals, as a ceiling?

Jimmy's contract is up right as Tyler is entering RFA. Even for the most optimistic person, what does the best-case scenario looks like for Tyler? He struggled to Iso or score at the rim in Kentucky, are you willing to plan on maxing a player who won't get downhill at all?

Even for somebody all-in on Herro right now, it's hard to envision him as the best player on a team with legitimate title aspirations.

If Miami is content with just making the first round for the next decade (and they might), that's fine.

But eventually, they should plan ahead.

This might seem like I'm down on Herro and Bam, but I'm not.

This is just the danger of never attempting to align a timeline in the NBA, and throwing money at quick fixes shaped like Jimmy (Richardson and 141 mil), Goran (2 firsts, 86 mil), and Waiters (52 mil) that come along.

In closing, some pundits are going to try and talk this team up around April as dark horses in the East.

Hard sell. There's going to be a lot of hemming and huffing to potentially not even make it out of the 1st round this postseason.