With 13,000 Heat fans anxiously waiting in AmericanAirlines Arena to welcome its newest trio of superstars, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh were upstairs finalizing their contracts. Minutes later, they emerged through a cloud of Canes-like smoke… along with some unexpected news. Udonis Haslem is returning to join the party.

Haslem’s commitment was, needless to say, a shocking revelation. Even I had previously reported that Udonis would not be back. The Heat was out of cap space, the team was unable to utilize his Bird rights, and he was not about to sign for the league minimum.

So, how was it possible?

In short, the triumvirate agreed to reduce the value of their contracts. And Riley turned around and utilized the recovered cap space to secure the beloved power forward, as well as newcomer Mike Miller.

But why would they so drastically reduce their salaries? Well, pure generosity. Udonis and Mike are friends of the Big Three, and the Big Three did right by their friends in their desire to put together a championship-caliber roster and close-knit team.

How much did they sacrifice? Let’s take a look. Read more…

Somehow, some way, the news just keeps getting better.

Free-agent forward Matt Barnes, who spent last season with the Orlando Magic, has told the Orlando Sentinel he’s interested in joining the Miami Heat, but his priority is to stay in Orlando.

That priority is likely the natural result of money. The Heat can only afford to offer a minimum contract, worth $1,146,337 to the seven-year veteran. Barnes, now an unrestricted free agent, opted out of a $1.6 million guaranteed contract in search of a bigger payday.

Orlando, however, is unlikely to provide one. The Magic would like to re-sign two of its own free agents, Barnes and guard J.J. Redick. But general manager Otis Smith stressed the Magic won’t overpay for either. It’s certainly understandable. The Magic now has a guaranteed payroll of over $83 million from its 11 roster players for 2010-11, putting the team more than $13 million over the tax threshold.

“We’ve been in contact with Miami,” Barnes said. “No question they’ve added some pieces with the Big Three.”

Barnes said he also has been in contact with the L.A. Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks. But the Magic remain “No. 1 on my list. I definitely want to stay in Orlando. That’s been my family’s stance as well.”

Barnes would presumably play a stretch forward position for the Heat, the same type of role which could be filled by roster hopeful Robert Dozier.

The following was reported today in the South Florida Sun Sentinel:

Should the Heat be able to pull off the maneuver, it would give Heat President Pat Riley unlimited resources to re-sign remaining current Heat free agents such as Udonis Haslem, Dorell Wright and Quentin Richardson — whichever are not included in such a sign-and-trade — without having to make those agreements work within the confines of the NBA’s “soft” salary cap.

In addition, such a maneuver would allow the Heat to retain its mid-level salary-cap exception for 2010-11, which it then could utilize to complete its planned signing of Washington Wizards free-agent swingman Mike Miller.

For the benefit of any dual readers who would certainly be confused and prematurely excited, allow me to clarify this ridiculous and impossible scenario.

Read more…

LeBron James is joining Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the suddenly star-heavy Miami Heat roster. The trio dramatically alters the league’s power structure, with the Heat instantly vaulted into what figures to be the Eastern Conference’s perennial powerhouse for the next half decade, ahead of such teams as the Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls and Orlando Magic.

But it’s difficult to project the team’s superiority as of now, partly because it’s not yet officially a team. The league requires all NBA teams to carry between thirteen and fifteen players on its roster during the regular season.

How do you build out a roster around three players who are arguably the league’s best at their positions?

The commitment of Wade, James and Bosh was a strong first step. It was so strong that each committed to the Heat without knowing exactly what he committed to. There were no assurances that any would receive their maximum allowable starting salary of $16.6 million for 2010-11. In fact, they won’t.

In an era where we complain that athletes never want to win and only care about money, three of the top players in the game have agreed to take less money to play together and to dominate the league for the foreseeable future, even at the risk of diminishing their own individual greatness. Ultimately, they cared more about winning and friendship than money and legacy. Remarkable. Read more…

The Miami Heat has taken another major step forward in its attempt to build out its championship-caliber roster, agreeing to a five-year, $29 million contract with Wizards free agent swingman Mike Miller.

Miller, 30, is one of only two NBA players (Steve Nash) who shot better than 50% from the field, 40% from beyond the arc and 80% from the line while averaging at least 30 minutes of playing time this past season. He has quietly developed into one of the most versatile and efficient offensive players in the game today. Miller is a multi-faceted offense threat: he can shoot, he can drive, he can pass and he can rebound. He often plays more than one position during the course of a game, including a point-forward type role in some stretches. Miller is best suited as a complementary piece, where his overall floor game can benefit his team greatest.

Miller, perhaps the game’s ultimate floor-spacing wing player, figures to get big minutes alongside LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and an as-yet undetermined center. If the Heat elect for a small-ball approach, Bosh could slide over to center and James to power forward, allowing Mario Chalmers onto the floor at the point. That could produce some of the greatest offensive basketball this game has ever seen.

Wade and James need little else beyond just the floor space with which to maneuver. Chalmers, Miller and Bosh could provide them just that. Simply by camping out along the perimeter, these players present their defenders with the following dilemma: should they sag into the paint and prevent Wade or James’ penetration and risk a kickout, or should they stick to their men and leave the driving player unattended?

That’s a tricky proposition made nearly impossible by the fact that James and Wade are perhaps the two best finishers at the rim in the game, and Miller and Bosh are two of the best perimeter jump shooters in the league. Chalmers, despite his regression last season, is advancing in his role as a three-point threat and could be in line for a breakout season.

Miller was reportedly seeking a multi-year contract above the mid-level exception valued at $5.8 million a year for up to five seasons. The 6’8″ ten-year veteran was being courted by several teams, including the Los Angeles Clippers and New York Knicks, each of which stood to offer him substantially more money. Miller now becomes the fourth Heat player who has taken fewer total dollars in exchange for the prospect of winning multiple NBA titles.

The contract status of Wade, James and Bosh can now be finalized. Miller’s contract will start at $5.0 million, with 8.0% annual non-compounding raises. That would leave enough room under the $58.044 million salary cap for each member of the trifecta to sign a contract with a 2010-11 starting salary of $15,423,364, a $1,145,544 discount from the max.

After they do, Miami will have five players under contract – Wade, Miller, James, Bosh and Chalmers – and no additional room under the salary cap with which to operate.

A Miami Heat dynasty is currently in formation.

The cloud of mystery that has surrounded the stay of Michael Beasley in South Florida for the past two seasons has been lifted. The talented but troubled forward will be traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves, as previously speculated.

Per Marc Stein and Chad Ford of ESPN:

The Miami Heat have found a trade taker for Michael Beasley that will create more salary-cap space for the dramatic transformation of their roster.

Sources close to the situation told ESPN.com that the Heat have agreed on a trade that will send Beasley to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who can absorb Beasley’s contract into their salary-cap space.

Minnesota, according to sources, will complete the trade by sending Miami a second-round pick in 2011. The Wolves and Heat, sources said, have also agreed to swap an unspecified future first-round pick.

While the consideration offered for Beasley does not seem like much of a return in exchange for the young and promising second overall pick from the 2008 NBA Draft, Pat Riley has bigger plans in mind. The $5.0 million in salary cap space gained is enough to guarantee maximum contracts for each of Wade, James and Bosh, with an additional $2,149,883 to spare.

However, Riley has already secured commitments from each that they would be willing to shave money off their deals in order to acquire additional talent. It seems likely that the savings will therefore be re-directed to fill more pressing needs in the rotation.

Three-point specialists Mike Miller and Kyle Korver as well as point guard Derek Fisher, all unrestricted free agents, could be among the targets. The Heat has reportedly made an offer to Miller, which was to expire at midnight, in the range of $27 million to $30 million over five seasons. The executed Beasley transaction could be a signal that Miller has accepted the offer.

Pat Riley turned 65 years old in March, the retirement age for most but apparently the age of reinvention for him.

Just when Riley seemed to be on the verge of fading into professional irrelevance, buried under the weight of a pile of mistakes and a bitter fan base, he executed an unprecedented triple play, as he calls it, positioning himself for a climactic final act of a six-decade career that resembles the finale of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

As the model of his own standard, Riley has long been a target for satire with his slicked-back hair, Armani dress code and a motivational intensity that could exhaust a robot army. But NBA people who dismissed him as a pretty-boy ex-player and Magic Johnson’s house man in the 1980s and wrote him off as a Miami burnout case not all that long ago must now concede that he is an unparalleled multi-generational titan of the world’s greatest game.

This is vindication.

Riley’s unrivaled summer of 2010 truly started with the summer of 2004.

There was no elaborate plan for the Heat to woo LeBron James and Chris Bosh back then. Instead, that’s when Riley got Shaquille O’Neal to sign a $100 million, five-year contract. With that one move, costly as it was, the Heat had become instantaneous NBA royalty. The very next season, only an ill-timed strained Dwyane Wade rib muscle denied the Heat its ultimate goal. But a championship followed the season after. Riley believed another dynasty was on the way.

Then, thud.

The team quickly got old. Fat. Unmotivated. Undisciplined. Ultimately embarrassed in a first round playoff shutout. Things had to change. Desperately.

In an effort to pull out from under the abyss, Riley made a series of questionable decisions which crippled the organization. Unable to salvage its former glory, the Heat unceremoniously traded O’Neal in February 2008, Miami was quickly the NBA’s worst team, and Riley quickly realized that the bloated contracts the Heat had been accumulating would keep his team from having any real money to spend until 2010.

The intervening years were a monumental struggle. Riley stood idly by as a once-proud roster was slowly and effectively depleted of its talent. He seemingly couldn’t adapt. Couldn’t adjust. He was getting old. His philosophies outdated. His rants tired. His trades awful. His draft selections even worse. He seemingly had no idea what he was doing. Wade was unhappy. Fans were angry.

But there was method in his madness. Every deal he struck was made with summer 2010 in mind, not wanting to take on any contract that would keep him from digging as deeply as possible into owner Micky Arison’s pockets this fateful summer. It was a strategy that infuriated Heat fans who refused to waste prime years of their Hall of Fame shooting guard’s career.

It was a strategy that Riley himself struggled with at times. In the summer of 2007, he nearly killed the dream when he offered Mo Williams everything he could; Williams thankfully ended up taking more elsewhere. The next offseason, he signed James Jones to a contract that could have killed the dream. Last offseason, he offered Lamar Odom a contract that would have killed the dream.

But here we stand.

After three long years of preaching patience in the face of uneasy failure, Riley has become the face behind the most brilliant plan in NBA history — a dream scenario even he never thought possible. Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh will all be wearing a Miami Heat uniform in October, a trio of All-Stars and Olympic teammates that rivals anything from the Magic, Kareem and Worthy days of the “Showtime” Lakers to Bird, McHale and Parish of the Celtics to MJ, Pippin and Horace Grant of the Bulls.

Whether the earth-rattling move was the result of a longtime scheme hatched by James and Wade, the product of a masterful strategy implemented by Riley, or the synergistic power of the Creative Artists Agency, which represents the Heat’s principal characters in the story, is at this stage irrelevant.

Riley cleared the money. He created the structure and culture of family. He was the one with the experience to leverage. Talk of titles wasn’t just idle talk with him. He had lived it. He had the rings to prove it. Seven of them, in fact, as a player and coach.

And that’s what Riley sold James and Bosh on. Come to Miami, he said. Win championships. Make history.

In James’ case, Riley brought his proof.

A bag of championship rings. Riley put them down on table. Rings and family, that’s what he talked to James about for the better part of three hours.

When that meeting ended, he and Arison walked out of the room, confident that James was coming to Miami.

A week later, the deal was done.

“Blood, sweat and tears, all that as a family. And that’s what I’ve always been a part of my whole life,” James said. “That’s always, since I was a kid, what I always seeked. And when I heard that from Pat and from Micky, it was, that was kind of like the icing on the cake for me.”

James paused. “And the rings were pretty cool. I need a few of those.”

Riley played with Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West. He coached Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He coached Wade and Shaq. Now, as an executive, he’s brought in LeBron James and Chris Bosh. He leveraged his championship legacy and Hall of Fame ties to deliver what could be the most talented trio in league history.

Wade. Bosh. And, in a stunner, a two-time league MVP in James. All together on one team, his team, basketball’s best in 2006, basketball’s worst in 2008, and now one hoping to be in position to win it all for years to come.

Love him or hate him, few can argue that in a league filled with movers and shakers, Riley moves the needle like no other. He’s done it for decades.

Act VI – decade six – is just beginning. It could be his best of all.

Rampant media speculation about the future of LeBron James seems to have given way to a harsh reality for several team owners across the league. The overwhelming consensus is that LeBron James will join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh as a member of the Miami Heat.

His recent actions, and those of Heat president Pat Riley, support such a notion. But the Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, New Jersey Nets and New York Knicks all remain hopeful.

The moment of truth is now upon us. James is scheduled to announce his decision as part of an hour-long ESPN special that starts tonight at 9:00 pm. The decision is expected to come within the first ten minutes.

What do you think?

I, for one, think LeBron James will choose the Miami Heat.

It appears as though Michael Beasley may not be part of Pat Riley’s vision for the future of the Miami Heat organization.

Per Chad Ford and Marc Stein of ESPN:

Sources say that a four-team trade scenario between the Heat, Raptors, Bobcats and Rockets hatched on the eve of LeBron’s hour-long “Decision” special on ESPN would enable Toronto to bring back an asset or two in the wake of Chris Bosh’s departure but also avoid taking back Beasley. Which is believed to be the only sort of sign-and-trade that the Raptors would consider.

The proposed deal, sources said, would send Beasley and Rockets forward Jared Jeffries to Charlotte, land Bobcats center Tyson Chandler in Houston and create sufficient cap space for Heat president Pat Riley to offer max-contract money to Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and James.

The Heat and Raptors engaged in discussions for several hours after Bosh and Wade announced that they were committing to Miami in a package about the various sign-and-trade options. Discussions were serious enough Wednesday night, according to two sources, that Heat officials told Beasley to start preparing to relocate.

Such a transaction would be contingent on the approval of Toronto general manager Bryan Colangelo which, despite significant financial rationale, has yet to be given. The Raptors appear unwilling to play a part in any transaction that would make Bosh’s departure more lucrative as well as aid the Heat in the possible acquisition of LeBron James.

If the Raptors ultimately consent to a sign-and-trade, Bosh would be able to sign a six-year max contract with the Heat worth approximately $125.5 million, and Wade and James could secure maximum contracts as well. As of now, if the trio split the shortfall equal, they would each fall $937,452 short of maximum dollars, which equates to $7,101,099 over the life of a six-year max deal utilizing full Bird rights and $5,437,222 over the life of potential five-year non-Bird max contract.

Toronto, meanwhile, would come away with a combination of Rockets personnel set to make at least $3.1 million in salary in the coming season as well as a trade exception as large as $13.5 million. Alternatively, the Raptors could secure Beasley and a trade exception worth more than $11.6 million in a direct Heat-Raptors sign-and-trade scenario. It is yet to be determined whether any additional considerations (potentially up to $3 million in cash and/or draft picks) would be included by the Heat in any such package.

It has also been suggested that the Heat may have alternative plans for the cap room a Beasley departure would free up. Mike Miller has reportedly been offered a five-year deal, worth approximately $27 million to $30 million. If Miller were to accept the offer, his contract would likely have a starting salary of between $4,655,172 and $5,172,414 in the coming season. Beasley is set to make $4,962,240.