{"id":50327,"date":"2025-08-07T12:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50327\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:06:07","slug":"southeast-notes-sarr-heat-trades-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50327\/","title":{"rendered":"Southeast Notes: Sarr, Heat, Trades, Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Second-year Wizards big man Alex Sarr<\/a>, playing for France, enjoyed an impressive showing during a EuroBasket warm-up game against Montenegro, per Eurohoops<\/a>. In an 81-75 victory, Sarr scored 19 points and pulled down four boards across just 13:49 of action.<\/p>\n

After being selected with the No. 2 pick in the 2024 draft, the seven-foot center made the All-Rookie First Team with Washington for 2024\/25. In 67 healthy contests, he averaged 13.0 PPG, 6.5 RPG, 2.4 APG and 1.5 BPG.<\/p>\n

Sarr\u2019s Washington colleague Bilal Coulibaly<\/a> chipped in another 10 points for the French team.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more out of the Southeast Division:<\/p>\n

Reeling after a drama-filled 2024\/25 season headlined by the Jimmy Butler<\/a> trade demand, the Heat are looking to return to contender status moving forward. In a reader mailbag, Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/a> (subscriber link) suggests that the key to improving for Miami is trades, not free agency. The NBA landscape has changed mightily since the summer of 2010, when president Pat Riley signed free agent future Hall of Famers LeBron James<\/a> and Chris Bosh<\/a> to form a superstar \u201cBig Three\u201d with incumbent guard Dwyane Wade<\/a>. That team went to four Finals in four years, winning twice. Butler was also acquired in free agency (via sign-and-trade), but the Heat have since embraced the trade route. To wit, Miami managed to acquire guard Norman Powell<\/a> from the Clippers as part of a multi-team deal this offseason.
\nThe Heat have some cap flexibility in 2026, but the top free agents in that class are combing off the board as a result of several offseason contract extensions, observes Winderman in another Sun Sentinel story<\/a> (subscriber link). All-Stars like Paolo Banchero<\/a>, Luka Doncic<\/a>, Kevin Durant<\/a>, De\u2019Aaron Fox<\/a>, Jalen Williams<\/a>, and James Harden<\/a> have all finalized extensions with their respective teams or are expected to do so, while players like Chet Holmgren<\/a>, Mikal Bridges<\/a> and Bradley Beal<\/a> have also completed multiyear deals. Harden and Beal do have player options for next season, so in theory they could become available. Dyson Daniels<\/a> and Draymond Green<\/a> are among the notable players who are extension-eligible but have yet to agree to new contracts.
\nIn case you missed it, Hornets forward Grant Williams<\/a> recently provided an update<\/a> on his rehab from a host of season-ending knee issues suffered last November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Second-year Wizards big man Alex Sarr, playing for France, enjoyed an impressive showing during a EuroBasket warm-up game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[12986,64,63,726,42597,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-50327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-alex-sarr","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-bilal-coulibaly","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50327","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=50327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}