The team with the best record in the East, Miami Heat, is out of the Playoffs and will have to evaluate the likes of Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro in the offseason.
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Miami Heat would surely have gone the distance and made it to the NBA Finals for the second time in 3 years to face the Golden State Warriors who have come out of the Western Conference for the first time after 3-years.
If they weren’t as severely short-handed as they were without any major injury issue in their starting line-up, they might have had a good chance to win it all.
With Jimmy Butler’s tremendous form they still took it to Game 7 of the Conference Finals despite Tyler Herro’s dip and Duncan Robinson’s miraculous disappearance from the starting line-up because of his severely bad defense.
Had both of them played as they played in the regular season, the #1 team would surely have come out of the East. The off-season will be tough for the Heat team to decide upon whom to keep and whom to get rid of.
The hammer might fall upon Duncan Robinson in the offseason if Heat decide to get more solid pieces on defense
The 22-year-old Herro did elope in the Playoffs, but his regular-season performance had earned him the Sixth Man of the Year award which cannot be ignored in his evaluation for next season.
Robinson though, already had a significant dip in the regular season (10.9/2.6/1.6) as compared to last season (13.1/3.5/1.8) which was one of the reasons for him losing his big rotation minutes. He just played 72 total minutes in the Conference Finals and scored 33 points in 7 games.
The main reason Duncan didn’t see many minutes after a terrific 27-point Game 1 against the Hawks was because of his weak defense. And Miami didn’t have the luxury to have two guys in Tyler and him on whom any decent scorer could score at will.
So, Robinson will be the man who could be a tough pill to swallow in the off-season as Erik Spoelstra and Co had just given him a 5-year $90 million contract last season. And NBA Twitter knows the drill all too well.
Until he suddenly wakes his defensive genius up, Duncan wouldn’t be affordable by the Heat because a team like the Celtics has all the players with strong defensive minds. Even Warriors, other than Steph Curry, do not have anyone who struggles on defense.
