Miami Heat: Has the Butler/Adebayo build run its course?

Miami Heat: Has the Butler/Adebayo build run its course?

Welcome to latest episode of five on the floor in the five reason Sports Network thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app Google podcast Apple podcast Spotify and red circle as well as the Five Reasons YouTube channel make sure you hit like subscribe and turn the

Notifications on also check us out on off the floor that’s our new Discord server we got nine channels there fans are communicating with each other all day and we pop in there more than more than from time to time uh we’re on all the channels there including the host

Updates channel so make sure that you check it out avoid the Clutter of Twitter X Instagram and all that stuff just talk heat and anything else that you want to talk about in our channels but it starts with the heat the link is right here in the five reasons Twitter

Page pinned up at the top also on the YouTube descriptions and on the podcast descriptions also check out the great sponsors of the five reasons Sports Network water cleanup of Florida you can find them at wcu.com Michael Robert and his team they’ll take care of you from

From beginning to end they told me to mention the leak detection because that’s really important you get the leak detected early you don’t have to pay for it afterwards so get the preventative uh program with them again reach out to them great people based in Boer rone

They got more than 75 plus reviews Five Star Plus reviews on Google um and also uh you take a look again the jobs that they do if they can’t do it they’ll tell you they’re honest contractors and it’s hard to find those people these days so based in Bokus service all Three

Counties reach out to them wcu fl.com if you’ve got the Schmutz they got the guts and now five on the floor ride for my dogs where here the thing you can check the score Hustle Hard couple SCS we bubble FR just like bu said you in trouble y

Check the FL plan got a all y’all see a block stop with one hand and P trust it’s F have the guts we here to bring the heat y’all hang it up welcome to five on the floor a daily Insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA featuring Ethan skullet Greg sander

And Alex Toledo plus others from the five reasons Sports Network all right welcome back to five on the floor here’s today’s floor plan I’m Ethan skolnick you follow me at Ethan J skolnick and five Reon Sports we got Greg sylvander you can follow Greg sylvander apologies for my voice uh you

Know South Florida dips under 80 I’m get a cold that’s how this stuff works here all right make sure you check check out the episode that Alex and I did last night we posted one with Brady had some technical trouble Alex and I redid it um did about 20 minutes worth it’s worth

Your time because I think we got into some things that we have not gotten into and a lot of it was a discussion about bam which actually we’re GNA continue today Greg and I today’s floor plan is pretty simple is the heat floor plan expired that’s kind of where we’re at

Right now because we keep talking on all these episodes epes about well if this happens right if they go get an attacking point guard they did that they traded a first round pick to do it I like the move I still like the move I think Terry Rosier with a little bit of

Time will work on this team but it’s hard he’s not’s not just joining a moving train he’s joining a moving train that was headed for a ditch so it’s not easy at this stage to get your bearings when everything is moving around you you got players coming back uh expectation

Level on you is pretty damn high and you’ve been playing in the Shadows for the past three years nobody’s been paying any attention to you and now all of a sudden you’re on a team that has expectations it’s different so I still like the move but again we thought that

That might help right away it hasn’t second thing we talked about was okay if they get hwz back right because they were one in five without hootkins and haime had a big block in the last game it didn’t make a huge impact doesn’t seem like it’s just a one guy thing then

It was okay if Jimmy Butler just plays more aggressively right so he had 11 points in the first quarter finished with 28 they still couldn’t stop any anybody and they lost in the Knicks and now theyve lost six straight and we go down the line and I know that the next

One that people are going to talk about is okay when you put Duncan in the starting line up and put hero on the bench and I know that the analytics tell you that that’s more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic but to me it still feels like rearranging deck chairs

On the Titanic like I I get the I get the numerical reasons to do it I get the basketball reasons to do it yep but it seems like this team has deeper issues than that right now and this is the big one Greg the Heat have had a bunch of builds

Okay and they’ve had a bunch of builds because they’ve had stability they’ve had stability at the top with ownership they’ve had stability in terms of the guy who’s guiding the franchise and Pat Riley they’ve had stability in terms of the guy who’s taking care of the economic situation in Andy ellisburg

They had they’ve had stability on the coaching staff and now they’re going to have eight more years or seven more years of this of Eric splure after this and so they’ve had all these things and that’s given them an opport Unity to go back in and build and I remember having

Lunch with someone in the front office in 2019 in Vegas and it was prior to the Jimmy Butler acquisition and it was basically like okay we’re back on a build cycle right now like this is after they drafted I guess 2019 would have been who that would have been Tyler

Right so that we’re back in a build cycle right now we just need one guy to come that guy came and you know they’ve gotten close Okay but you had the Z Tim build right and then you you know then we’ll talk about what happened there at

The end and then you know then they have kind of the Dwayne build into the Sha build right and then that you know blows up but after a championship and then you had the build to the big three and you had the big three build and then you

Come out of that and you were hoping to have kind of a Bosch build I guess after that but then he got sick and so you ended up uh having a bunch of builds that didn’t work right me some mediocrity overpaying some guys and then ultimately the Jimmy build so they’ had

These builds but here’s the thing about them these builds don’t typically last this long yep and so Greg I will ask you as I see the floor to you has this gotten stale has the because it is the Jimmy bam build like we can talk about Tyler we talk about

Hakz it’s the Jimmy it’s the Jimmy build but it’s the Jimmy bam build yeah and we’re looking at Stats where Jimmy has had 10 assists to Bam the whole season I mean even though they haven’t played together as much like the per game number is is half of what it was last year

They’ve always been kind of a clunky fit on offense but now the defense isn’t working either but they have made it to four Conference Finals and you know a three Conference Finals and a couple of NBA finals has this gotten stale do you remember when Pat Riley

Said when the big three were were um broken up by LeBron announcing he was going back to Cleveland I remember LeBron or I remember RI said something to the degree of I thought that this was going to be a team that we had for a decade and it didn’t come to fruition

And that was part of probably what fueled some of the emotion at the time because I thought that that was going to be a team that went for a decade if you really think about it there ain’t that many damn decade teams and in miy heat history these are four fiveyear builds

And we go back into another cycle and there’s transition years and I actually love that stuff like if we chronicled that that’s a show to me that we could do and I would love to just go through the way that they’ve transitioned build over build but here’s the thing I’ve sat

Quietly with this because I don’t want to overreact right because you’ve seen what they’ve done you’ve seen these runs that they’ve made I’ve sat quietly thought about it long and hard it’s time to make a major change to this build and I don’t know what that

Means just yet I really don’t but I know that it’s time and even if they get their together and they start to play better and even if they make a nice run in the playoffs and they prove that they still are a contending team whatever them that means and that

They’re a tough out Etc even if they get to the Conference Finals it’s going to be coming up short and I just can’t help but think that you don’t want to be a year behind you don’t you want to be a year ahead of this stuff and at least on the nose when

You’re supposed to Pivot from a particular build a particular group of guys and this is it for me I just don’t see any way out of it otherwise Ethan and now I’ll seed the floor back to you this is what you’re basically saying and I don’t think anyone’s saying

This but this is the circumstances with which you may be presented you may have to do the whole thing you did last year all over again where you have no series at home no game fives at home no game sevens at home home and then what if you somehow magically get through the

Eastern Conference because the heat are not better this year uh statistically than they were in the playoffs last year yeah we’ve yet to see them get to that level they have had very few moments this year where you say oh that’s that team right so they’d have

To do all that and then they’d have to go and beat the Western Conference Champion too and then they that’s how that’s like it’s like a miraculous thing to try to ask them to do that so to me let’s be proactive about this and that’s where I stand today which is it sucks

Because to me there’s something that it hurts to say it out loud but I can’t run from the fact that that’s probably where we’re at and I don’t know what it means as far as changes but I know that we’re there here’s the thing people are going

To ask us to be specific about this so let let’s try to drill it down as much as possible all right and before we do again I went through some of the heat history here and how long the builds last I mean The Zo Tim build essentially started in

1995 uh when zo was acquired got a chance to talk to zo um before the gala the other night and about his pride uh and I put that video on the YouTube channel you should check it out because he you we talked about the the promises

That that the Arison and Riley made to him when they acquired him and how he tried to make good on those promises and that build started in 95 and then the acquisition in February of 96 of Tim Hardaway and the acquisition after that of Jamal mash and that was and then of

Course PJ Brown came along uh in that second free agent period and that was that was that build and that build went essentially like I said from the first years kind of throw it out to a certain degree because you know there was Timmy was acquired on the Fly uh but then

After that you know beating the Knicks but then losing to the Knicks losing to the Knicks losing to the Knicks and when they came off the floor in front office people have talked about this they knew they knew that that was it like that they they could not bring that same they

Didn’t know what they were going to do but they could not bring the same team back again so the decision was made then to flip the third guy which was mash and the fourth guy which was PJ and you know they brought in mace but primarily it

Was about Eddie Jones and Brian Grant was going to be about Tracy McGrady at Grant Hill but they both went to Orlando so the pivot was made to Eddie and and those guys and we’ll never know what would have become of that build because

Zo got sick uh but I it’s almost hard to look at it like the same build because they did make drastic changes there right but we can call it all in the same space all right well anyway that’s if you if you’re take if you’re not gonna

Go to the the Eddie Jones part of it you’re still talking about four years I mean that was about four years and then a major pivot was made then you look at that the Dwayne bill now that that never never really got a chance to build the

Way that they thought it would because Shaq became available like who knows what it would have been if it was Dwayne and Karan uh you know and Lamar as the core of that team going forward but it kind of got ripped up after one year and

It worked out right you get Shaq but he didn’t even wait more than a year after one year he flipped Eddie right and then brought in these other pieces again Eddie Jones third best player uh Antoine Walker comes in along with Posey and Payton and Jay will then you look at the

Three built that was all built excuse me built together you mentioned that you know what he said he actually said it to me I mean I I I did a to sit down with Pat in his office after LeBron left and and he said I thought we’d all we’ all

Be going to barbecues together like that he expected that to be he called it a generational team yeah that LeBron broke up um so that was not the Heat’s desire to break that up that was LeBron’s desire to leave and then they tried to kind of reshape it again around Dwayne

But really about Chris uh because that’s where the offense was going and then of course Chris got sick and then drage so it’s hard to know exactly what the bill was there but the point is five years is a long time like this is one of the

Longer builds in Miami history and you can call it a legitimate five-year build because bam was here when Jimmy got here so to me the clock started when Jimmy got here and Tyler came in the same year as Jimmy so that is your build so I I

Guess as you look at teams around the league and there was a great tweet about this and I wish I’d kept it but that said that basically every team every Contender flip their third guy okay and he will tell you people call about Tyler all the time because

Teams always call about your third guy they don’t think you’re gonna trade your first or second and that’s why it’s always like Tyler hero is in trade discussions he’s not it’s just that that’s what teams are typically asking for okay because they they look they

Look stupid if they ask for bam or Jimmy but we’re going to get to more of that in a second so if you look at teams Milwaukee I thought Middleton was their third guy but some people would say drew was their third guy they flipped their

Third guy right to get D Boston You could argue that Marcus Smart through this run has been their third guy pretty much I mean he was the guy that was consistently on the court they flipped Marcus Smart uh to bring in porzingis to become their third guy and of course

Then they added Drew so they got even more than that right um You Look beyond that at at Philadelphia Harden was their second guy but kind of become their third guy right and now they still haven’t fully replaced him but you see the point all of these teams the

Clippers have kind of had two guys this whole time decided to add a third guy right um you know Denver uh made the move to get a third guy and Aaron Gordon uh you know you know a couple of years ago a lot of these teams when they make

The pivot they trade or they trade or acquire the third guy like joic and Murray is the build in Denver and if they don’t win this year then maybe they’ll flip Gordon or they’ll flip uh Porter Etc I’m bringing all this up because that is the default position to

Where Heat fans are going to go to flip the third guy switch out the third guy find someone else but but let me ask you this because this is the harder question yep uhhuh do you ultimately flip the second guy or the first guy because if you’re talking about like really doing something

Dramatic that’s what we’re talking about right we’re talking about is the Jimmy bam Duo can you if you just add pieces around them is that enough and I they look you think so absolutely well I mean they’ve done nothing but prove to us over and over again that they have and

Frankly they did it without Tyler herro so I mean like we talk about the third guy they didn’t even have that guy when they made those runs I think it’s crazy to think that that Jimmy and Bam now this year and in this six-game losing streak I understand the frustration but

Overall if we’re going to zoom out a moment they’re not the issue so you’re right this is going to default to the third guy if you talk about wanting to trade let’s just go down this road for five seconds and entertain it even though I hate doing it trade Jimmy or

Trade bam trade bam I I hate that I said that out loud someone should smack I smacked myself in the face for saying trade Bam um what would you get who’s out there around the league that you’re going to go get that’s going to dramatically

Reshape this I mean I guess bam aab bio gets you in conversations but what player do y’all want to go get and when I say y’all I’m just speaking out loud like who who who is out there and when you talk about Jimmy I guess you’d be sending him to a

Contender and then you would be signaling to your fan base that you’re going through transition again so that’s like a really nuclear move bam is pretty nuclear as well because I think that that gets you in deeper conversations for bigger names but what names are we even talking about

Here um I just don’t see them out there and I also think that keeping bam and Jimmy is really the way to go here to me the next move the Miami Heat make will be the most important move to the balance of this build like we’ll find

Out is it going to be something where they’re going to have to reset completely or can they bridge the gap between bam Tyler bam whoever else is here and Jimmy Butler’s you know Prime essentially which we never know when that’s declining and we saw him play

Great in New York he needs to conjure up more of those maybe he’s saving it for the playoffs I can’t help it shake that I feel like there’s a part of this where he didn’t want to do a bunch of heavy lifting in in the regular season and he

Hoped that he had a great enough roster topheavy enough roster to let other guys go out and get 40 on a nightly basis and they don’t have that guy right now that can go and do that and so um I think this ultimately becomes about what can

You do around Jimmy and Bam to shake this up and take a real shot and damn it’s gonna take the perfect move so you got to get it right all right so a couple things on that they don’t have anybody on their roster 40 that includes Jimmy I I don’t

Know that Jimmy can give you 40 points right now honestly except that second half against Indiana which was a team that wasn’t defending and I I just keep coming back to this and it’s no disrespect to Jimmy I think we might have seen Peak Jimmy right before he

Sprained his ankle against the Knicks in the playoffs like I I that I keep coming back to that because he wasn’t the same after that and he’s pretty much been this year with the exception of a couple of games what we saw towards the tail

End of the playoffs last year which is a good player but is not a a onea and you know nikayas is on a chat with us and obviously everybody follow should follow Nas’s work and he said this today and I it resonates that everybody on the heat feels like they’re one slot too

High that that that essentially you know that in a perfect world Jimmy would be a two and Bam would be a three and Tyler would be a four um it’s not a perfect world but I’m going to come back to this this number and I just looked it up and

It’s worse than I thought what do you think their net rating is this year oh my God uh negative double digits no no no if it was that we talking about a lottery team what what do you what they’re over no I’m talking about their overall team net rating oh

I’m sorry I thought you meant the three the three the three man lineup might be that that might be sorry completely misinterpreted overall team net rating um it’s May maybe just slightly negative slightly minus 1.0 minus 1.0 which is worse than it was last year we talked about that not being good enough

And I know that the counter to that is going to be they got to the finals with that right I and I I understand that but you said it at the top that’s not happening again you’re not gonna go through the gauntlet what happened last year was a weirder run than the bubble

Like that to to beat Milwaukee the beat way they beat Milwaukee you know the Knicks had had their holes which they’ve I think they’ve patched some of their holes now with the trade that they made um you know and to to win in Boston to

Be up 3 0 against Boston and then to close it out with a blowout on their floor like these were anomalies like this is not you’d have to go through a lot of NBA history to find any example even close to what the he’ accomplished last year and so now you’ve got Jimmy

Who got banged up in the playoffs last year who was physically exhausted by the end seemed emotionally exhausted by the end and seems more emotionally exhausted now I I I will say you know look looking at that that clip of um looking at that clip of him answering question from

Brady the other night I haven’t seen Jimmy look that deflated defeated he’s usually the one kind of spitting into the wind like he he’s the contrarian if you tell him something he’s gonna tell you the opposite defant he just basically went along with the question he seemed resigned and and I so I’m

Saying to myself okay that build like the gym bam build you’ve got 10 assists from Jimmy to Bam the whole year Bam’s NE net rating is negative this year okay he’s just become a mid-range shooter like everything we talked about he needed to take that shot it’s all he

Takes it’s all he takes like the other stuff lately but the numbers are bad on it too and look his other numbers are fine okay the rebounding numbers for the most part have been good and all that and everybody knows what I think of bam as a defensive player he the best

Defense player in the world I think when uh when he can anchor a good defense okay and and I I still think he can get back to that but I I I just think sometimes we’re thinking and we’re GNA go to a sponsor here and then we’ll

Close this thing up I think sometimes we’re thinking in terms of what they’ve been and I’ve watched a lot of builds where the what they’ve been and what they are not the same thing like we talk about the zo Tim build well you know it kind of reminded me of like Marino with

Zach and Jason with the with the dolphins yeah by the time that Danny finally got a defense he couldn’t do anything anymore right and I used to make this comparison all the time because by the time that zo grew into the role of leader of offensive player

And before he got sick okay Timmy’s Talent Timmy Timmy’s knees shot yeah right and sometimes that’s just what happens and I don’t know we talked about the Dual timeline or I’ve called it the bridge timeline and I respect the way that they’re going about this you want

To have a future I don’t think you you gut the whole future for a now and one of the reasons I think you don’t is I don’t necessarily know if it would get you over the Finish Line anyway and so it’s like okay I get the point of

Keeping yic keeping the additional first round picks because you’re gonna have to Pivot and they know kind of what their future will be if they don’t make the Go in all in on Jimmy move which is it’s basically bam Tyler hakz uh and maybe yic and then you use

These other assets to try to bring somebody in and you’re talking about a post Jimmy world and I know that that frustrates Heat fans who want Jimmy to get one but I I think that that may have come and gone I hate to say it I I think

That the best opportunities were before Goran drage hurt his foot in the bubble because Goran was giving you what Jimmy needs what Kyle never gave them Goron gave it to them in the bubble he gave them the relief points right right all that kind of stuff uh and and gor if

Goran doesn’t hurt his foot and Bam doesn’t go out you never know I still think they could have won that series and then you look at last year they I don’t know that they beat Denver anyway but Jimmy was spent by the time that they got to that so there was never

Really an opportunity this just yeah it just might be one of those builds like the Patrick Ying builds in New York or the Malone Stockton builds in Utah where you just you just don’t get the breaks I don’t mean to be depressing today but I think we’ve got to think about it like

Is that what we’re looking at but I have one more question here because I’m curious what you think about when we talk about the third guy uh before we do though I want to mention a great sponsor of the five reasons Sports Network our friends over at you break Wheel Fix

That’s with the you you break Wheel Fix and I’m mentioning this one today because Mark came out yesterday he’s just he’s a great dude he watched the Heat game with us uh he sponsors our podcast m m as well as Omar’s um and he’s uh the biggest thing is he runs

Runs a great great business uh you break will fix you can find them in North Miami uh they’re base right there um I’m going to give you the address here in a second Northeast 143rd Street that’s Northeast 143rd Street North Miami right off of again biscan Northeast 143rd fast

Turnaround times minimize your cars downtime catch you break Wheel Fix on all social media platforms or contact Mark directly at 305 748 0112 that’s 305 748 0112 20 years of experience repairing and refinishing damage wheels from Curb rash bends and cracks juice up your car with a fresh look with custom

Powder coating colors to set you apart from the resting and it’s ubreak wheel fix.com so let me ask you this is there any chance that the Heat’s third guy is on the roster right now and maybe it’s not Tyler here yes but that but in order to get to that

Cuz it’s tiny Haw is but in order to get to that it would require a roster balancing move because right now Tyler herro is locked into that position as you know I mean he leads the team in field goal attempts so I mean I don’t know when we talk about the hierarchy

Here I mean I know we think it’s Jimmy bam Tyler but the field goal attempts tell me it’s Tyler bam Jimmy um even though we know what goes on in the playoffs So to that point with Tyler being such a featured piece of the offense I just think you need to balance

Things differently if you thought that hakz was ready to take that on but also frankly if we’re going to talk about being really real do rookies take on the third role on championship teams not often that’s a pretty damn big ask and so uh again this is a a situation where

If you’re going all in for Jimmy part of that move and but you see you already traded your big expiring contract the real go all in on Jimmy moo is to take a big expiring contract like Kyle Lowry haime hakz yovic all your picks and you go get the best player possible they

Didn’t do that they went for a more moderate move that I actually agree with and I also understand that it’s Bridging the timeline and it’s not sacrificing everything for Jimmy I think that that’s the right move but you need to balance this roster differently and if it’s

Gonna mean that you feature hawz moram all for it but to me that means that you got to go get bigger this team is small it’s too small everybody else got bigger around the league the league has shifted we cannot be behind the times that way like when you see what the porzingis

Trade has done for Boston they got him basically like they they got him gifted to get him you know what I’m saying like in in that transaction I know they gave up Marcus Smart but go back and look at how that transaction actually worked up for them

And it worked out nicely and now that’s opened up a lot of stuff for them they’re long they’re hard to to defend that’s the kind of stuff you’re getting from Milwaukee that’s the kind of stuff you’re getting from the top teams out west whoever makes it out of the

Conference and you don’t have that you are too small so that means that I think that it’s has nothing to do with Tyler herro being a bad player has nothing to do with him being a um failure of any kind in his heat tenure it just means

That that’s probably the route you go to try to balance this roster differently well that’s a coaching thing too I mean spos is gonna have to be on board with that because we know that he tends to prefer to go small we know that the president of the team prefers to go

The other direction so the league may be coming back to Pat honestly but not in the way that Pat coach did it’s coming back ex skilled bigs it’s not it’s not coming back to post ups that kind of thing it’s coming back to the zingus

Types and if you can if you have a skilled big who can play with a guy like Horford and you can play them together and you can space the floor you get the added benefit of additional length and size while also spreading the floor and not uh fogging things up the way that

Maybe they did in you know Pat’s late 90s days or something along those lines so but that again that’s a compromise that’s gonna have to be made I I’ll go to this one before we close we we talked a little bit about builds around the NBA the only build that’s gone longer

Than the Heat’s current tw- man build and if we call it with Tyler a three-man build is Golden State that’s it Curry clay and Draymond that that’s that’s the only one that’s longer you could say Tatum and Jaylen brown but again they changed out smart they made the changes

And you look at at at the Lakers going back when they added Shaq and they had Kobe they traded Glenn rice as a third it was it’s your guy they traded I I covered those series they weren’t happy with Glenn for a variety of reasons but

They did win a title with him they changed it out they’ve run in like a pastest crime Horus Grant and some other pieces and Rick Fox took a bigger role Derek Fischer took a bigger role and they kept winning and you know you look at the Bulls I mean around Jordan and

Pippen it was it was horrus and then it was and then it was R right so they they these other teams have made changes and so I understand why why why Heat fans are going to go to the third guy it’s always where we go and I understand the

Need for size and I understand the difficulty making this fit but I’ll say this okay and and this is where I’ve come around a little bit the past few days as I’m watching this team but I’m also looking at the numbers and just I mean they’re not a good team right now

Like I they’re 19th in the league in net rating that’s not a good team and and now you know lately at least everybody’s been healthy I think they need to look at everything and when I say everything I mean everything everything okay have a good day everybody

With the Heat now barely over .500, and with a net rating below the flat line, Ethan Skolnick and Greg Sylvander look at everything that’s happening in the fifth season of the Jimmy Butler build, featuring Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro. Most builds don’t last this long, not in Miami Heat history or the current NBA. So is it time to make more drastic changes? Or can the organization squeeze more out of it?

Sign up using the code FIVE to double initial deposit at PrizePicks.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel for Miami Sports on Demand!

Content about the Miami Heat, Miami Dolphins, Miami Hurricanes, Miami Marlins, Florida Panthers, NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS, college football & more!

If you want more exclusive Miami Heat content, join our Off The Floor feed here: https://discord.com/servers/off-the-floor-miami-heat-and-nba-1168987954958585939

If you want more exclusive Miami Dolphins content, join OnlyFins on Discord: https://discord.gg/onlyfins

If you’re interested in sponsoring Five Reasons, contact us at fivereasonssports@gmail.com

#MiamiHeat #BamAdebayo #JimmyButler