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Also, check out the great sponsors of the Five Reason Sports Network. It includes our friends Michael Robert, his whole team based in Boca Raton. You know what it's water clean up of Florida. You might have a leak today, I hope not, because if you're at the Panthers Parade and then you come home to a flooded house, that's not going to be great. Reach out to our friends again at water clean up of Florida. WCUFL.com, that's WCUFL.com. Get the preventative maintenance. They service the entire Tri-County area based in Boca Raton. They'll do the damage assessment for you if you get to them a little bit late and they'll work with your insurance company to get you the most possible money back. Check it out, water clean up of Florida. WCUFL.com, if you've got the schmutz, they got the guts. And now, today's this game. [Music] Welcome to Five on the Four, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA. Featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Selvander and Alex Toledo, plus others from the Five Reason Sports Network. Welcome back to Five on the Floor here today's Floor Plan. I'm Ethan Skolnick. You can follow me, Ethan J. Skolnick and the Five Reason Sports. I got Greg Selvander. You can follow me, Greg Selvander. I got Alex Toledo. You can follow me, Tropical Blanket. We hope that you've enjoyed all the post-draft coverage. We appreciate everybody who's been on here on the podcast, whether it's Matt, Eternal, some of the others who have joined us. Brady's going to be back with us. During free agency, right now, he is literally swimming at the Panthers Parade. He does not get hazard pay for this because I did not assign him to this. We do appreciate our guy Alex Baumgartner, who I do want to mention. For those of you who are Panther fans, Alex was with the Panthers the entire season, covered a ton of home games, covered some road games, made the trips to Edmonton, all the trips to Edmonton, 12 hours out there, back, didn't see the championship and then got to see it here. Make sure you're filing a Baumgartner 91. Hopefully, he's going to be with us a long time and check out all of his Panther coverage. All right, but we're talking heat today. I did an episode with Eternal kind of resetting things after the draft. Now, we're going to go forward a little bit. There has been some news since the last episode. We can tell you also we're going to be on playback. If you're listening to this before that, we'll be on playback during free agency tonight. We've got everybody seems to want to join today. It's funny. There's not anybody to host. And then today, I've got like 15 people. So you're going to check it out. Playback, download the app for free. Go on to the five reasons room and hang out and watch the free agent stuff develop today. So let's start with this. I'm going to go through the list, guys, of things that have happened and where they may stand. Kevin Love has opted out of his contract. The report is that he's looking to sign a different deal with the Miami Heat. My expectation is that he re-signs. But again, anytime that anybody opts out, you never know. He's a free agent. He did a very good job for the Heat, particularly last season. I do think they'll be interested in him, but I also think there's strong interest from the Heat in bringing him back and having him mentor the guys the way that he has and also be available maybe this year for more spot duty than full time duty than he was last season. The other thing that's happened is Thomas Bryant has opted out. I'm not entirely surprised about that. I don't think it's the worst thing in the world either. It seems like he wants more playing time. Of course, draft it a little where. That adds another big to the front court. Thomas Bryant really didn't get consistent playing time last year. He had moments, but he also showed some of the flaws that we knew he had when he came, particularly on the defensive end. I don't think Thomas Bryant will be back. In a way, I think this helps the Heat. That worked out Josh Richardson, who was starting to find his way a little bit last year, particularly on the offensive end. But the defense was starting to come up a little bit as well. Then he separated his shoulder, didn't play the rest of the season. It was based on Delaun Wright and Terry Rosier. Josh Richardson has opted in, which is something we anticipated. He gets another roll of dice here, basically, with the Heat to see if he can rebuild some value. Maybe he goes somewhere else next year, but he's a good depth piece for the Heat. He's somebody that they know and obviously somebody that they like. Kayla Martin appears to be gone. That was our anticipation before free agency started. This is the Max Strus thing, I think more than the Gabe Vincent thing. I don't think this is particularly close for the Heat. I think there was an acknowledgment that Kayla was not going to be back. He had a choppy season, but he's certainly worth more than the 7.1 million option that he opted out of. They will miss him. I know he wanted to stay, but even when I spoke to him during the playoffs, I got the sense that he was probably going to follow the Gabe and Max route. This is what should happen. You find a guy like that. You develop into something more than you thought he could be. He had a much bigger role. I remember Brady and I being at the first scrimmage that he was at and both saying, "Wait a second. That looks like a rotation player." He turned out to be more than that. He was a part-time starter, could have been Eastern Conference Finals MVP. He's a great guy if you've ever dealt with Kayla, and I think that I think all of us are sort of in agreement here that we wish him the best. That's where things stand right now. I know everybody's going to want to talk about other players. We'll certainly get to that. The one other thing we do need to address, and I addressed it a little bit with the internal is the Jimmy Butler situation. Bam out of bio has gotten his three-year $166 million extension. Jimmy is not going to get his extension. Now he says he doesn't want his extension. This feels more like I'm breaking up with you. You're not breaking up with me kind of deal. But if you've been following me here and us on off the floor and on five on the floor, we've been telling you this was going to happen. Most likely the heat would not offer an extension, and that probably Jimmy would decide that this was going to be his last year in Miami. Now he has said publicly that he wants to be in Miami, we'll see. I have also said that I don't think that this is the worst-case scenario for either side. Jimmy Butler, when he's a free agent, if he has a good year, is going to be highly sought after. And if he has a good year, the Miami heat are going to benefit. There's motivation here for Jimmy to play a lot and play well. And I think ultimately that's what you want for this season. But I think he fans have to prepare for a future without Jimmy Butler at some point here. Guys, did I miss anything? Greg? No, I think you about covered it. That's a lot of stuff that's gone down recently. The Jimmy stuff is interesting, especially because it came out right as the BAM extension news hit. I thought that that was interesting timing, that those two nuggets were floating around at the same time. I want to start off by tempering expectations on free agency start today. Miami is not in a position to be big-time free agent players. And so I think naturally, when you see all the Wojbombs and Shams tweet out what he does, you're going to want to see the heat involved. They don't have really exception money because likely anything that they would use in terms of if they use their taxpayer exception, it will probably go to Heywood Highsmith if I had to guess versus an outside guy. And then it's veteran minimums. It's Kevin Love coming back, maybe saving the heat a little bit of money. Shout out to Brian Goins and Miami Heat Beatty's documented all this on Twitter in a great way. Easily digestible, check him out there. So there's ways that they can bring back Kevin Love, maybe add a couple veteran minimum guys that they immediately target. Remember Josh Richardson was on the first day of free agency and we didn't expect that last year. So I think that those are the maybe things to watch early is they try to find guys that are willing to take the vet minimum in a good situation in Miami for a role, and that's kind of how free agency starts. And then we have to just watch the trade market. That's where Miami is going to be able to have the most impact as we head into free agency at six o'clock today. Alex, so far what you've seen, what's the most, what in your view is the best news, what's the worst news, and what's the most surprising news? Well, I guess the most surprising was Kevin Love opting out, but as you mentioned and has already been covered by others that it's just, you know, it seems like a situation where, you know, he'll be back on an extra year, maybe at less per per year annually and allows the heat to save a little bit away from the second apron because God knows that's terrifying them and the rest of the league. Other than that, other than that, I just feel like the Jimmy thing is, you know, it's headed towards a place that I'm not comfortable with. And that's just kind of where I'm at right now because, like, you know, you mentioned what's, you know, what's the bad news, whatever, like that's the bad news. That's the bigger picture here. That report coming out or, you know, like right before the draft, the other night that, you know, he's not going to sign an extension anymore, even though he can still, it's not like a deadline pass, like they can still offer it to him if they so please. But that signals that it probably probably wasn't offered. And now, like you guys mentioned, he's just like kind of getting ahead of it and saying, all right, you've made your decision, you know, and has like it's already been put out. I'm going to, you know, be professional and play the season out. And, but like we all know where this is headed and Ethan is the one who's been talking about it this whole time, you know, with like, well, if he doesn't get the extension, he's just going to opt out. And, you know, walk next summer. And the fact that we're even like it feels like we're headed towards that outcome and it's starting to feel like, you know, it's kind of snowballing towards that direction. And that sucks. It sucks because there's been so many good memories out of this run, like so many expectations blown out of the water, so many great moments. And it's like, you know, I don't, how do you, how do you build around that? Have they already like accepted. Okay, this is like the last year of the Jimmy era is that is that what is that what it is now? Like you just kind of have it in the calendar, like this is it with the Jimmy era for the Jimmy window. And then after that, we just pivot to the young guys, right, who you've got some now. And I don't know, like I just think, you know, what you're playing a game where your contention window, you're kind of, you know, playing around with it. And it might be a lot shorter than you might have expected a couple of years ago, right, or maybe even after last year where you made another finals run. It's like, man, here we are, right, just, you know, a year out where we just like go through this season of Jimmy playing. And then he walks like that. That's how this all ends. And that's just kind of how I feel about it. And then Caleb, you know, like I talked about it all season. I think it's just unfortunate, you know, to a smaller, much smaller extent than the Jimmy situation. But comparable, like you mentioned to Caleb and Gabe, I mean, to Gabe and Max, excuse me. And it's just like, you know, three guys who are rotation players for you and, you know, a big finals run and as well as other playoff runs. And it's just, you know, it ends very unceremoniously. And that's the theme of kind of, I just, it just, you know, it leaves you with a sour taste. At least, at least it does for me because I know everybody, or not everybody, but a lot of people had moved on from Caleb already. And it's like, whatever, you know, not that high on him anymore, but he was a conference finals MVP runner up. Like that actually happened. One of the craziest things to happen in this whole run. And it's like, oh man, now they're just going to let him walk because of the second apron. And I understand why. But it's like, here we are again. You know, you're building up guys, you're turning them into good players and, you know, you end up getting nothing out of them. And then after, you know, like several playoff runs and they're just going to go to good teams and do their thing. And, you know, whether it works out or not, I just think all of it, you know, that's a smaller extent. But Jimmy to a much bigger extent, all of it just ending very unceremoniously is what I feel like it's headed toward. Well, okay, let's have a discussion about that. And maybe we're going to split this into two episodes, actually. And we'll get into what's going to happen today in the next one because I think this does warrant a discussion. On the Caleb Morton thing, I think we've got to make a choice here. Okay, you know, I was very outspoken during 16 and 17 in particular about the heat overvaluing guys who they could replace. And so I can't have it both ways, honestly, you know, and trust me, people have the heat of reminding me of that. And I'm cognizant of it. I mean, you know, you look at the difference between 16 and 17, where they got Deon Waiters at $2.7 million, right, for one year. And they got James Johnson on a make good contract and all that. And then, you know, then the next year, you know, they overpay guys who, I mean, let's be honest. I mean, Deon had some injuries, you know, he had some other issues but was ultimately, and I know Alex made disagree. I mean, it was ultimately the replaceable. I mean, you know, Deon is, he didn't do anything after he left Miami. Let's just, again, let's just be honest. James Johnson the same, others the same. The history of this is that when players leave the heat, whether they're Rodney Magruder or anybody else, you don't really hear from them again. Now, Max last year had a pretty good year in Cleveland. There was some dissatisfaction during the playoffs in terms of his consistency, which is kind of what we talked about in Miami. I think Cleveland fans liked him, Gabe, of course, Kendrick Nunn, others. I mean, there's really nobody out. I mean, Derek Jones, it took him like four years to find the right fit to end up on a finals team. So, you know, I don't, and then we go back to, like, even like the decision they made to keep Kaleb and not PJ Tucker because of the circumstances they're involved was the right decision. But now I think, unfortunately, you know, the right decisions are once you maximize these guys, I mean, unless the guy has unreplaceable skills or irreplaceable skills, I'm sorry, then it's better to move on than to hamstring yourself in any significant way. So, look, I didn't think Kaleb was going to be back. I wanted Kaleb to be back for selfish reasons because, personally, just I like Kaleb. I like his game, and I was hoping they could work it out. But it was pretty clear from the start, and that's why I asked him, and we played that interview. I said, if you had conversations with Max and Gabe, and I'm sure he's had conversations with Max, and I know what Max went through, and Max pretty much knew from day one that he was going to get an offer that was the heat we're not even going to really look at. So, I just think there needs to be consistency, at least for me on this, that I'm not going to give them a hard time about not keeping a guy who, I mean, again, was recommended by a rapper. I mean, you know, I mean, anybody in the league could have had Kaleb Martin, okay, and they maximized him. And I guess the only argument, Greg, and I'll go to this because I know there's some in the Twitter sphere who feel very strongly about this part of it, is if you're not going to keep them, then why not? This is more reasonable argument to me. If you're not going to keep them, why not get an asset somewhere? Why at the trade deadline? And I argued against it. I said, keep Kaleb. We thought they were trying to make a run. They got Rosier. Okay, so it was kind of like, okay, let's see what this team looks like. But I can understand the other side that says, well, why not try to get a second round pick when you could have? Does that make sense? I mean, I understand the argument. I think what's difficult is that there's a bundle of context that comes with each player situation and the team situation at the time of when you'd be able to trade them. And like, if you think back to all these scenarios, the heater typically trying to compete. And so it sends the complete counterintuitive message to send a contributor away for future assets and then tell the locker room. Oh, well, we're just managing our assets. Like players don't want to hear that kind of crap. So I think there's a balance there. Maybe they should be a little more opportunistic with finding the right guy to send away when the value is high enough to actually yield something that makes sense. But for the most part, I think it's unrealistic to think that they're just going to keep flipping these guys and kind of fracturing the locker room over and over again and sending that message when they're trying to also compete because that's talking out of both sides of their mouth as well. All right, so I'm going to let you get in on this on the other side. And I think what we are going to do here, we're going to discuss love. I want to discuss the long right. So this will be more about their own free agents. And then we're going to produce a short episode after this where we're going to get into what might happen today. So make sure if you download this one, the other one will be coming right behind it. Do you want to mention a great sponsor of the Five Reasons Sports Network? Our friends over at Autograph, you want to find all your heat content in one place? This is where you can do it. You can also find episodes of Five on the Floor there. They're posted there on the app. So go to Autograph, download it for free. Using the Code 5, F-I-V-E. They also got great contests on there. We once gave away a BAM jersey, it was $500. We gave it away for $13. We'll be doing more of that. Check it out where real fans get unreal rewards. Go to the App Store and download the Autograph app for free. Is your vehicle stopping like it should? Does it squeal or grind when you break? Don't miss out on summer break deals at O'Reilly Auto Parts. O'Reilly Auto Parts. Alice, let's pivot to another player here. Kevin Love. So how important is it that they bring him back? Honestly, I would say pretty important. I would say you want somebody like that back, especially now that you've drafted. Just somebody, another guy who can help mentor him a bit as he comes up in the NBA now. But more importantly, because all the off the course stuff has been talked about with him since he's been acquired. How much he's helped the locker room and all that. I obviously can't speak to that, but as far as on the court, I feel like just having him back. Like you mentioned earlier, somebody who maybe doesn't have to play quite as much who doesn't have to be relied on every night to do it, but can. I think that is the sweet spot for him. And that's why the drafting a guy like where I see the vision partly because we've seen the limits with Kevin Love. He's been this great piece, great. Again, off the court locker room edition, all that. On the court has really helped those Jimmy K Love units this year were pretty much their best lineups and have been since he's been here. It's more so than him playing next to Bam, which I think is what a lot of people were excited for when he got here. And you really saw it like only that time when he got here and not much since because like those Jimmy and Kevin Love units have been so valuable to right like having a guy who can actually space the floor and is a threat. And teams are scared to leave him open out there as you're big, right? And it's just, it gives Jimmy so much more space to work with. And so bringing him back for that alone, I would say is valuable, especially when you're talking about getting a guy around the vet minimum like I think that's a pretty good value add. And as we know, you know, with the newer CBA, like these, these value additions are important, right? And I think that's part of the reasoning behind their draft in a way because I know that like they could have gone with a 23 year old and Dalton Connect or Tristan De Silva with that first round pick. But when you look at the totality of the players they got, they kind of addressed like different roles, different holes, you might say. And, you know, I feel like they're looking at this draft class is like, and not to mention maybe one or two of these undrafted guys as guys who could help, you know, in the, as far as being just like a value add and having them in a nice little contract. Like I think they're, you know, that influenced their thinking with like maybe getting a guy like Casha Johnson as a guy who could be a winger placement. I think that influenced their decision with, you know, drafting Pele Larson. And then I also wonder if, you know, the Jimmy stuff maybe took away some importance from drafting two guys who could help you right away right now who are both polished right away right now because I think where will, right? But, you know, they got a guy who kind of, you know, they, they, they, they were trying to do two things with one pick there because like they got a productive guy who's also really athletic and still young, right? So I feel like they're trying to play both sides of the timeline there. And regardless, like, you know, you solidified your front court, you solidified a couple more pieces there that I think they're excited to add to their program. But in the meantime, you need guys like Kevin Love, you need those band aids and I think he's still got a little bit more to give. So even though you don't want to play him too late in, you know, against some of the best teams in a playoff series, you need what he gives you from now till then. One guy we haven't talked about is Heywood Highsmith, another is the lawn right. There hasn't been a lot of news on right. So far, I would anticipate the heat would have interest in retaining him, particularly the way he came on at the at the vet minimum, right? So maybe let him explore his market, but I kind of feel like that's somebody that they circle back to. Let's discuss Heywood here. What is reasonable for him is he's not irreplaceable. I don't want to say that, particularly if they're going to try to go a little bigger in the front court, then you're going to have to play Heywood more. Again, I know Sean's going to get him. I always say this, Sean, you're going to get on me about positions, but they're going to have to play him more as a three. Maybe they may not be the minutes up front, particularly if they reside love, then you're talking about you've got Yoavitch. And again, if there's no major trade, you're talking about, you know, Bam, Yoavitch, where and and love. There's not a lot of room there. So, but you don't have more than anymore. So you have you need somebody to and again, if they're going to go with a rosier hero back court. I mean, God help them defensively. They're going to need somebody to guard guard the quick guards there at times. So what would what would be reasonable? It seems like it's trending towards him coming back. What's a reasonable number there. So this is interesting with him because you're right, they're likely going to put a number up, draw a line in the sand and not go over that number. And that's just how they're going to approach. And I bet you it'll be somewhere around the non taxpayer mid level somewhere in the five and a half million dollar range. Maybe they'll try to get a little under that per year for multiple years, and they're going to have to hope that there isn't a team out there that wants to use a portion of, or all of their non taxpayer mid level. That's kind of what I think Caleb will go for, which is, you know, almost $13 million or so 12 point something we're rounding up on today's show. That is where I think Caleb. Well, they just have to hope high Smith doesn't get an offer similar to that or above the number that they set, because even if they do their veteran minimum additions to round out the roster. It looks like they're only going to be nine 10 million away from the second April and once they're done with that so they can have the team come in and offer Heywood High Smith, you know, nine million a year they just can't afford that to be that close. So they're gonna have to hope for it to be more non taxpayer, or excuse me, taxpayer mid level, which is, you know, five and a half somewhere in that range hopefully that comes down a bit. You try to get a hometown discount for a guy that you've cultivated, and it appears he wants to be there I think that that could be something that gets done early but there only needs to be one team that offers more and then you're kind of in a tough spot with them. All right, we're going to close this one here. I do want to mention a couple things on high Smith first thing. He has a very specific skill sets. I, you know, with Caleb like you can see what the market would be like I think people could put a lot of teams could project Caleb as potentially a starting wing or maybe a six or seventh man Swiss army type. Like there's a lot of teams I think Caleb would fit on like different style type teams. I kind of feel like there's a very limited number of teams there Heywood would really continue I mean I'm afraid that if he goes somewhere else he becomes a Ronnie Magruder that we never really hear from again like if he goes to a bad team. There's no fit there it's it's like the conversation I talked to when I talked to Shane bad he he's like listen I needed to be on the right team. He's like you put me on a bad team I'm useless there's no point to me I'm a plug the holes on a good team player. And that's what Heywood is and I think he understands that and the second thing is and I will say this because she's broken more news than I have lately. My daughter was at heat camp this past week and Heywood was the featured guest on Tuesday and she said daddy don't worry he's coming back he told everybody's staying in Miami. All right so we'll so blame her but don't blame her anyway we're going to do another episode here in a second after you consume this one make sure you check out the next one thanks to our sponsors of this one autograph use the code five FIBE and also water clean up of Florida we'll be right back with you. Thank you for listening to the five on the floor on the fibers and sports network after all someone needs to listen to my dad. Get two cans of O'Reilly break parts cleaner for just eight dollars valid in store only at O'Reilly auto parts. O'Reilly auto parts.
