The Miami Heat finished last season 46-36 and, unlike the previous year, did not make a valiant run from the play-in to the Finals. In a memorable press conference after they lost their first-round series against the eventual champion Boston Celtics in five games, Heat president Pat Riley challenged franchise player Jimmy Butler to be more available and criticized Butler for talking trash about the Celtics. (Butler missed the series with a sprained MCL.) In the offseason that followed, Miami did not sign Butler to a contract extension, did not tear down the roster and did not make a major, all-in move. On Thursday, in an interview with reporters, including the Miami Herald’s Anthony Chiang, Riley said he wasn’t prepared to hit the reset button in the summer but described the 2024-25 season as “crucial” and said it would be “telling.”
“I wasn’t comfortable in just saying, ‘OK, I’m going to give up on this team this year because we’re a play-in team,'” Riley said. “If you get in, you get in and then you go from there. Two years ago was an anomaly and we ended up in the Finals. I’ll take the anomaly any day. But we do have a very good team.”
Butler missed 22 games during the regular season before the MCL injury in the play-in. Tyler Herro missed 40 games. Terry Rozier, acquired from the Charlotte Hornets in January, appeared in 30 games but missed the final week of the regular season, plus the play-in and the playoffs, because of a neck injury. Rozier appeared in only 10 games with both Butler and Herro, and in only two after Feb. 7. If Butler, Bam Adebayo and Herro comprise the team’s “core,” then Miami only had its core on the floor in 27 games for a total of 499 minutes.
“We don’t know about this team because you can’t have Tyler and you can’t have Bam and you can’t have Jimmy play 30 games,” Riley said. “So it would be like me saying when I was coaching that Magic [Johnson] and Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] and James Worthy, well they only played 30 games. From that reality standpoint, we need everybody. I hope and pray that we can be…
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