the Heat\u2019s lone postseason game<\/a>, the play-in overtime road loss to the Charlotte Hornets, with the alignment.<\/p>\nBut at other times, Ware\u2019s play had Spoelstra going small to the degree of utilizing small forwards Andrew Wiggins or Pelle Larsson in the power rotation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so he was up and down with it for a number of reasons,\u201d Riley said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s where he\u2019s going to have to, along with me, have a discussion about how are we going to be successful on the floor with the guys that we have that we think have a huge upside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riley then continued with praise of Ware.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Kel\u2019el and what he\u2019s done,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s had monstrous games.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a very versatile player. But sometimes you\u2019ve got to stay with it. You simply have to stay with it when young players are not performing at their highest and they have these bad games.\u201d<\/p>\n
At midseason, patience with Ware seemingly was at a Spoelstra low point, when he said of the 2024 first-round pick out of Indiana, \u201cI get it with some young players. You sometimes subconsciously play poorly to say, \u2018Hey, I\u2019ll play poorly until you play me the minutes I think I deserve. Then I\u2019ll play well.\u2019 That\u2019s not how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spoelstra walked those comments back before the following game, saying: \u201cI didn\u2019t articulate that in a great way, and that wasn\u2019t fair to Kel\u2019el. What I\u2019ll say is I\u2019m fully invested and invigorated about the opportunity to develop Kel\u2019el, and our staff feels the same way and we\u2019re gonna give him everything we have to make sure he becomes the player that he wants to become, that we need him to become.\u201d<\/p>\n
From there, there was a rollercoaster for the balance of the season in terms of role and minutes.<\/p>\n
And yet, if there is a blockbuster personnel move to be made, there might be another Whiteside-Ware parallel.<\/p>\n
A year after Riley\u2019s \u201cintervention\u201d quote regarding Whiteside, Whiteside was dealt to the Portland Blazers in the 2019 offseason trade that delivered Jimmy Butler to the Heat from the Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n
This summer, if there is to be the type of franchise-altering trade Riley believes possible, Ware almost assuredly would be among the trade components.<\/p>\n
So any sort of \u201cintervention\u201d or anything similar likely will be put on hold.<\/p>\n
For his part, Ware said he would savor the opportunity to make more of the pairing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like if we got more reps at that, then I feel like it would have progressed more,\u201d he said during his recent season-ending media session. \u201cBut like I said, it\u2019s going to take reps. So, I mean, obviously, I would hope to continue that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adebayo also sees something there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like Kel\u2019el is a lot more comfortable when I\u2019m out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The final vote, for all the Riley influence, remains with Spoelstra, who closed the season stressing, \u201cIf we play two bigs, it has to be dominant defensively and on the glass, in particular. But you need that kind of versatility in this league now. You need to be able to play big.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 This time, there was no mention of a planned \u201cintervention,\u201d which, if nothing else, shows a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[114,123,125,2490,124,2295,110],"class_list":["post-249638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-heat","tag-miami-news","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}