The Miami Heat entered this past season with the ability to include two future first-round picks in a trade. The Heat enters this offseason with only one future first-round pick available to throw in a trade. That’s because the Heat dealt away one of those two first-round picks as part of a trade package, which also included Kyle Lowry, to the
Charlotte Hornets to acquire guard Terry Rozier in late January. It marked just the third time in the last decade that the Heat has traded a first-round pick to acquire a player, with the previous two times coming to land Goran Dragic in 2015 and Jimmy Butler in 2019. In other words, the Heat thinks highly of Rozier. “We’re happy to have him,”
Heat president Pat Riley said last week when asked about Rozier during his season-ending news conference. The issue is the Heat did not have Rozier, 30, during this year’s playoffs because of a neck injury. Rozier missed the final
four games of the regular season, the two play-in games and the entire five-game first-round playoff series against the Boston Celtics with what the team listed as neck spasms. The hope is that Rozier will recover from the neck injury and be ready for the start of next season.
