ASK IRA: At their core, are Miami Heat still a potential contender?

Q: Ira, I don’t mind small moves. I understand rosters are 15 players and only seven or eight make the biggest difference in the big games. So I’m not here to opine on signing Alec Burks or Thomas Bryant or Dru Smith or even Kevin Love. You win with your best players. No offense, and the Celtics were great, but they won because of the best starting lineup in the NBA – not because of Luke Kornet and Payton Pritchard. So let’s cut to the chase: Are Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro good enough to be a championship core? – Alex.

A: And, to be candid, that we don’t know – with Tyler Herro sidelined during the run to the 2023 NBA Finals and then Jimmy Butler out for this past season’s playoff run when Tyler actually had a heck of a moment in the victory in Boston. But I do believe those three are capable of big things, as teased in the 2020 NBA Finals. Granted, Jimmy is older now, but Bam Adebayo is at his best. So I think – with all due respect to Terry Rozier, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and other Heat supporting pieces – it comes down to where Herro stands, and where the Heat stand on Herro. Is he a No. 3 on a contender, which, these days means being in some pretty strong East company (such as Kristaps Porzingis in Boston, Mikal Bridges in New York, Paul George in Philadelphia). So I would say that if Tyler Herro is something close to what he was in that one shining moment in Boston during the playoffs, then hope is alive.

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Q: The Heat were never going to be in the market this year to sign a top-tier free agent.  Any deal was always going to be via trade and the Heat has until the trade deadline.  We can run it back, see if the new pieces along with Jimmy Butler playing for future money has the Heat looking like a serious contender and if not, there will be plenty of takers to move him by the trade deadline. Fans want immediate satisfaction, but I do believe in this instance, patience pays and we have time to steer a new course if that’s needed by waiting.  Of course, most fans want a new toy now, which I understand. But hey, we picked up some gifts in the draft and have a few potential diamonds in the rough from the G League.  Time to exhale, wait, watch and react if need be in February. – Brian, Fort Lauderdale.

A: Which is all well and good, but keep in mind that the new luxury-tax aprons make trades harder than ever. But I agree that there is no need to panic. Again, the bottom of the East is so bad, that it would be practically impossible not to at least match last season’s No. 8 seed. Brooklyn, Washington, Charlotte, Detroit and Toronto are practically playing to lose, and Chicago and Atlanta hardly have upgraded.

Q: Buy-low-and-sell-high patience is virtue. It’s harder than it looks with recency bias and you have to respect Pat Riley and the Heat for not overreacting. We are in a new age, where repeat NBA Final teams are not the norm. The last six finals have had a new matchup each time. Which means that the Heat going back to the Finals was a longshot. Unless it is for a whale, it doesn’t make sense to sell low. All of our big players were hurt last year. If you are running this team back, you have to make some adjustments, and the main adjustment that I am making is making Tyler Herro my point guard. – Kristopher, Oceanside, Calif.

A: That largely is semantics, since you also could consider Terry Rozier the point guard. More than any of that is the reality that the Heat need to find out if the Tyler Herro-Rozier dynamic can work.