He is on a similar trajectory as Alonzo Mourning, and I mean that as a complement. That dude was a beast, just never the best at any given time.

Tbf, Heat fans do know this to the point we criticised Bam (and Spo) for running DHO heavy offenses post the bubble run. We wanted Bam to be more aggressive scoring-wise and shift away from DHOs.

It was very noticeable when his confidence is gone once he goes back to only hunting DHOs.

If Bam really was a bigger, better, scoring version of Draymond I promise you the Heat wouldn’t be the 10 seed. I think you are massively underrating Draymond’s defense and playmaking. He basically piggybacked the Warriors defense the same way Steph piggybacked their offense. His playmaking is also just much better than Bam’s. The DHO merchant narrative is so overblown, that is more for players like Sabonis than Draymond, who put up 22/11/7 without Curry in a playoff series. In the season without KD, Klay, or Steph, Dray still averaged 6 assists, which is more than Bam ever did.

Bam doesn’t hold a candle to Prime Dray as a defender, and that’s not being disrespectful to Bam.

Prime Draymond was a league leader in steals while averaging more blocks per game than Bam’s best year, not to mention being the highest IQ team defender alive.

Bam is a great defender. Draymond is an all time defender. They’re not in the same tier.

Bam is a great big that just happened to have decent passing.

Draymond can play floor general at the 5. It’s not the same. Also see Joakim Noah the couple years after DRose went down.

Just because Bam has above average passing numbers for a big, doesn’t mean he can be the floor general at any given time.

They literally went to the NBA finals with Bam as the focal point. Leading scorer and rebounder for them in the Finals in 2023. Best defender too. This is such a ridiculous take. Any team that makes in the NBA finals obviously has a chance to win it. This whole “if this team didn’t literally win the NBA championship they sucked” take everyone wants to do is so dumb.

If you’re so fixated on regular season, they were literally a 1 seed in 2022. Jimmy missed a 3 to take the lead in Game 7 of the ECF with 12 seconds left in the game. How the fuck are they “not a threat to win it all” if they’ve been to 2, and very nearly 3 NBA finals in the last 6 years. Is nobody ever a “threat to win it all” unless they actually literally win the championship? I swear hindsight is absurd. Everything that happened more than a week ago is completely irrelevant and everybody just wants to say whatever hot take based off of the most recent game.

Maybe for 200-300 first round picks the Spurs trade Wemby

i mean this statement is true for almost any team the only exception is okc and maybe even then lmao

Klay was the 2nd best player until KD showed up.

The two times he has been to the finals as a second option he was thoroughly outplayed by multiple people on his own team. Dragic was more important to the bubble team and Caleb Martin was more important to the more recent one. They also didn’t come close to actually winning…

He made it out of the Eastern conference

We can’t keep doing this thing where we say “They made it to the Finals”, but it’s just a team that beat a couple of borderline lottery teams and the Celtics

10000%. They have a few good pieces, but they always think they’ve struck gold when all they got are mid one-dimensional role players. Like how they thought Herro would be the next Booker, and Duncan Robinson would be the next Klay.

They also don’t have a great point guard for like 20 years at this point. Even White Chocolate would be hunted off the court during the playoffs. I’m not counting old man Dragic as one, since he’s a traffic cone on D. Davion Mitchell isn’t one until he can shoot.

They held their bags too many times. Jaime Jaquez is going to be the next one.

You can’t honestly believe free agents wouldn’t have loved to play with LeBron in Miami

Well… he’s 6’9” so he’s not quite the anchor you think he is without a big man next to him. Offensively he’s pretty limited as he’s super, super inconsistent. It’s also not a popular free agent destination. LeBron and Butler came there because of Wade, nothing else. They have not, and likely will not, be attracting anyone to pair with Bam.

All my opinion.

That was literally 16 years ago

That was a trade, technically.

And????

Yeah Dame was really vocal about wanting to go to Miami. Kevin Durant talked about it too. How have they been playing for you guys?