Brett Siegel<\/a>, who specifically mentioned the Los Angeles Lakers as potential suitors, the Heat aren’t actively trying to move Wiggins:<\/p>\n“The Heat don’t hold much of a desire to trade Wiggins and are operating under the mindset of waiting to see how things play out during the first few months of the regular season, sources said. Miami has held a high asking price for the former first-overall pick, one that the Lakers haven’t been willing to meet.”<\/p>\n
Per Siegel, the Milwaukee Bucks have also inquired about Wiggins’ availability. <\/p>\n
In an era where teams either go all-in for championships or all-in on rebuilding\u2014with few franchises adopting a middle-ground plan\u2014fans my wonder why the Heat aren’t open to dealing Wiggins. He won’t make Miami the team to beat in the East, and he has a player option next season that he could decline. <\/p>\n
There are a couple of reasons why hanging onto Wiggins, at least for now, would make a ton of sense. The first is the fact that he’s a quality player who can potentially help Miami have a stronger season than most are expecting.<\/p>\n
In his 17 games with the Heat last season, Wiggins averaged 19.0 points, 3.3 assists and 4.2 rebounds while shooting 45.8 percent from the floor. <\/p>\n
Secondly, Wiggins will only turn 31 in February and should still have several good seasons ahead of him. There’s still a chance he can become a long-term building block in Miami, as the 36-year-old Butler once was. <\/p>\n
Most importantly, though, the Heat simply aren’t likely to get an appropriate return by trading Wiggins before the start of the season. The Lakers appear to be the team most interested in making a move, and if they’re unwilling to meet Miami’s asking price right now, no one will be. <\/p>\n
However, that can and likely will change between now and the trade deadline. As teams figure out how close they actually are to contention, the demand for players like Wiggins will grow. <\/p>\n
And should a team with realistic playoff hopes lose a starting forward due to injury, the Heat might even get more than fair market value for Wiggins. <\/p>\n
Of course, none of this guarantees that Miami will get its asking price for Wiggins later in the season or at the trade deadline. For now, though, exercising patience is the prudent plan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Heat haven’t missed the postseason entirely since their 2018-19 campaign. It’s would be a significant surprise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-154419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}