This was expected. Nick Richards had been working out in the Heat facility for a while, it was just a question of timing.<\/p>\n
Now with the Klay Thompson signing complete, the Heat and Richards have come to terms on a one-year deal for Richards to be a backup center behind Bam Adebayo, the team announced Wednesday<\/a>. This contract is not fully guaranteed until the season opens, notes Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel<\/a>. The Heat did the same thing a year ago with Precious Achiuwa, and it gives them flexibility if a player they are interested in becomes available.<\/p>\n Richardson will be the third center on the roster, playing behind Adebayo and Bobby Portis.<\/p>\n Richardson is a six-year NBA veteran, originally a second-round pick out of Kentucky. Last season, he split time between Phoenix and Chicago, appearing in 48 games and averaging 5.8 points and 5.1 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n This signing also puts the Heat at 14 standard contracts, which could be their roster heading into the season. They have the cap space to add a 15th player on a minimum contract, and veteran guard Gabe Vincent has been mentioned, but the Heat may choose to keep that roster spot open and see what develops. The non-guaranteed nature of Richardson\u2019s contract, and the fact that only $500,000 of Myron Gardner\u2019s $2.6 million deal is guaranteed, gives the Heat flexibility.<\/p>\n The Heat also agreed to bring back Keshad Johnson on a two-way contract (he was on a standard contract with the team last season), Winderman reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This was expected. Nick Richards had been working out in the Heat facility for a while, it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-827921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}