Now that the Miami Heat know they will be without Dru Smith for the remainder of the season, the team will have to figure out what to do with his roster spot. Miami has 14 players signed and already had a spare roster spot before Smith got injured. They’ve got two spots they can fill.
It’s likely that the Heat will only fill one, as the team attempts to minimize its payments under the NBA’s luxury tax provision. Currently, according to Spotrac, the Heat have $180.265 million worth of payroll and a tax bill of $28.7 million.
Replacing Smith would require a prorated minimum contract, and the Heat could turn to a veteran to do so. Veteran Heat insider Ira Winderman floated a few available names who are still free agents, but one was especially intriguing—John Wall, the former Wizards star who signed a four-year, $171 million contract extension back in 2017 and suffered a torn Achilles tendon in a fall at home in February 2019, just before that contract kicked in.
Wall was traded to Houston, but the rebuilding Rockets eventually asked him to remain home, though he was averaging 20.6 points and 6.9 assists. He made another comeback attempt with the Clippers last year, but was traded to Houston again and waived.
Though he is now 33 and, if he were to join the Miami Heat, would not be anything close to the player he was in his prime, when he was a five-time All-Star, Wall would be a good change-of-pace guard to bring off the bench, an attacking veteran who can handle the ball and pressure defenses.
That’s the plus. The minus is that Wall never latched on to the NBA’s 3-point wave. Try as he might, he just never became a solid 3-point shooter, and has a career percentage from the arc of 32.4%. He shot 30.3% from the 3-point line with the Clippers last year.
He is still an effective attacker of the basket, though, and that would add a dimension to the Heat’s bench that the team lacks.
Other suggestions from Winderman for Dru Smith replacements include newly minted TV analyst Austin Rivers, ex-Heat guard Goran Dragic and veteran point man George Hill, who split time between the Bucks and the Pacers last year.
As for Smith, he was rounding into the kind of little-known prospect built up by the Miami Heat developmental system that we have seen so often in recent years. Smith appeared in nine games and averaged 14.6 minutes, with 4.3 points on 45.5% shooting. He had been making 41.2% of his 3-pointers.
Coach Erik Spoelstra blamed the court in Cleveland for the injury. Smith suffered the injury making an out-of-bounds play against the Cavaliers and landed awkwardly because of the raised court at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.
Spoelstra said the freakish nature of the injury that added to the difficulty of the situation.
“You usually don’t voice it because you just escape without incident,” Spoelstra said. “But I believe that is the only court like that in the league, where there is an eight-inch drop-off from there to the ground. But it happened. And at least now we know what it is, we can put together a plan for Dru. He is built for this. He has that kind of grit.”