The Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets continued the early run of trades this season, with Terry Rozier heading to the Heat for Kyle Lowry and a protected 2027 first round pick.
It’s an interesting deal worth breaking down in a few capacities. Rozier, who made his Miami debut Wednesday against Memphis, is a complicated player, the pick traded is a fascinating asset and the Hornets are now in an interesting position moving forward before the Feb. 8 trade deadline.
Why Rozier helps Miami
Miami’s offense needed a boost. The Heat are tied for 21st in offensive rating, averaging 113 points per 100 possessions. They rank in the bottom half of the NBA in turnover rate, they don’t hit the offensive glass by choice (prioritizing transition defense) and they don’t take a ton of 3s despite ranking sixth in 3-point percentage.
Their offense bogs down too easily, and things can get stagnant. While coach Erik Spoelstra’s system generates space through intricate off-ball actions and timely cuts into open areas around the rim — especially when center Bam Adebayo initiates sets at the top of the key — the Heat don’t have many players who can drive into the paint and force help on their own. Jimmy Butler can, but his style is deliberate and slow. In general, the Heat lack team speed.
I didn’t trust anyone else on this roster to break down defenses. Lowry was a useful ball mover and catch-and-shoot player, but he doesn’t generate pull-up 3s like he did in his prime in Toronto and wasn’t getting downhill to the basket regularly. Duncan Robinson has been spectacular this season, in part because he’s actually become more effective putting the ball on the floor in ball-screen and dribble-handoff actions, but he’s not particularly shifty and two-thirds of his 3s still come off the catch. Jaime Jaquez Jr. is more of a basketball vulture who makes a killing off the scraps presented to him via mismatches and mistaken rotations. Caleb Martin is best attacking closeouts when the defense is bent or getting out on the break.
Even Tyler Herro is not really an isolation scorer. His shots tend to come after off-ball movement more often than not; even his pull-ups tend to involve him relocating after just one dribble. On the ball, he has only made 34.8 percent of his 3s when using a ball screen this season, per Synergy Sports. (Last season was the only one in his four-and-a-half-year career in which he even eclipsed 35 percent on those types of 3s.) He has a nice floater but takes two half-court shot attempts at the rim per game.
Those on-ball deficiencies are hindered by the Heat’s absence of high-volume 3-point shooters. Herro, Robinson and Kevin Love combine to get up about 20 3-point attempts per game, which is nearly two-thirds of the team’s per-game average. Not including Rozier, only Josh Richardson takes more than four 3-point attempts per game.
GO DEEPER
Terry Rozier trade shows Heat have accepted their current East reality
Rozier checks all of those boxes. Since arriving in Charlotte in the summer of 2019, he has made 37.2 percent of his 7.8 3-point attempts per game. Only 12 other players in the league have played in at least 200 games over that stretch, averaged at least seven 3-point attempts per game and made them at a 37 percent or better clip.
More importantly, Rozier has displayed the ability to generate those attempts and create other opportunities on or off the ball. With LaMelo Ball injured often, Rozier has been forced to take on a heavier on-ball burden than expected. But the time Rozier has spent playing next to Ball in the last four years has allowed him to get involved in different offensive actions off movement, which happens to be an important element of the Heat’s offensive style.
Here’s a knock-off split-action set Miami should be able to replicate with Adebayo’s passing skill. Rozier throws the ball into the post, takes a Nick Richards screen to go away from the action, then charges back toward it as Richards flips the screen to get a wide open 3. Imagine if the Heat ran something like this with an actual shooter like Robinson, or even Love, in Richards’ place.
Rozier can also create a lot of pull-up 3s off the dribble, a skill the Heat did not possess before the trade. Rozier is attempting 4.8 pull-up 3s per game this season, 11th in the NBA. Herro is close behind him at 3.9, but whereas Rozier creates many of his in pick-and-roll situations, Herro is often relocating with one dribble after already tilting the defense and ducking behind a screen to shoot. Otherwise, Robinson, at two pull-up 3s per game, was the only other Heat player in the top 150 league-wide in this category.
Rozier will create the kind of gravitational pull on the ball the Heat expected to receive from Lowry before Father Time came calling. He’ll suck point-of-attack defenders away from the rim while opening up space for Butler and Adebayo in the midrange areas. He can punish opponents for deploying deep drop coverages on the ball. He loves to take side-step pull-up shots, and he’s adept at getting to them going left or right. If you don’t stay attached to him coming off a ball screen, he’s going to put it up.
Rozier’s gravity will be especially useful in the Heat’s empty-side dribble-handoff and/or ball-screen sets with Adebayo as the screener. If Adebayo’s defender hangs back — which is something Adebayo himself does in the below example against Rozier and Charlotte earlier this season — Rozier can side-step into an open 3. If Adebayo’s defender instead fights up over the top of the screen to contest Rozier’s shot, it will open up pocket passes to the rolling Adebayo. When combined with putting lethal shooters like Herro and Robinson on the opposite side, opponents will have a difficult time accounting for each threat.
The other much-needed skill Rozier provides the Heat is generating rim pressure. He isn’t an elite driver, but he averaged 11.2 drives per game and took 6.3 field goal attempts per contest off them in Charlotte — a top-25 mark in the league and one that exceeded any other Heat player, even Butler. Lowry, by contrast, only attempted 1.2 shots per game off drives. Meanwhile, Rozier is also in the midst of the best passing season of his career, averaging 6.8 assists per game in Charlotte. Many of those assists are simple reads — dump-off passes to the roller or dishes to corner shooters lifting to the wing as the screener rolls to the basket — but some exhibit more advanced reads exploiting backline defenders stuck in a one-on-two situation.
Where could this go wrong for Miami?
The big question: Can Adebayo singlehandedly carry the Heat’s defense on his shoulders? The Heat’s point-of-attack defense with Rozier out there could be suspect if they don’t make another move pre-deadline, which puts an immense amount of pressure on Adebayo and Miami’s other backline defenders, Lowry’s foot speed was diminished, but he was consistently available off the ball with early rotations, stout on the ball when he could get his chest in front of guards and capable of fighting over screens. Herro and Robinson are critical players offensively, but neither can manage tough on-ball assignments. Robinson isn’t athletic enough, and Herro tends to get caught on screens. Jaquez fights and is physical, but his feet aren’t all that quick.
Rozier has been quite poor on defense since arriving in Charlotte. Defensive metrics can be funky, but Rozier never posted a positive Defensive Estimated Plus Minus in his four-and-a-half-season tenure with the Hornets and was often far in the negative. He possesses physical tools that made him useful in the early part of his career in Boston, and it’s hard to separate him entirely from what has largely been a low-energy Charlotte unit.
But Rozier also played a significant role Charlotte’s porous point-of-attack defense. A skinny guard, Rozier tends to get caught up on screens and doesn’t recover well once someone gets that initial advantage. He’s flat-footed too often to start possessions, like this one against Philadelphia’s Tyrese Maxey, a player he may need to guard in the playoffs for Miami. Tobias Harris makes essentially no contact with Rozier on the screen. But because Rozier is on his heels to start the possession, he takes a bad route around the screen, allowing Maxey to blow by him entirely.
His margin for error off the ball is basically zero because he’s a 6-foot-1 combo guard. The Heat will ask him to defend a mix of ones and twos, sometimes matching up with players a lot bigger than him. While he’s quick, he doesn’t cover much ground when, for example, he’s asked to be the low man on the opposite side of a pick-and-roll. Rozier can do everything right on a play, as he does here in tagging Jonas Valančiūnas’ roll and closing back out to CJ McCollum, but that is a hard rotation for a player Rozier’s size. He gets there fast enough to stop McCollum from shooting a 3 but can’t maintain his center of gravity, allowing McCollum to go through his chest before turning the corner for a score.
Rozier could be a target for mismatches in the playoffs, and opponents will exploit him in help situations if he isn’t fully engaged and prepared on defense. It’s worth noting Rozier was better on defense in Boston early in his career and could recapture that spirit in a winning environment like Miami that values hard-nosed play. But that was also a younger version of the 29-year-old Rozier, with a different offensive role from the one he’ll be asked to fill in Miami.
If Rozier can’t regain his defensive capabilities, Miami may end up having to choose between having Rozier on the court in high-leverage playoff minutes or going with Herro and/or Robinson. If that ends up happening, the Heat won’t get the full value of Rozier. And then the price point to make this trade might end up being quite high, because…
What’s the deal with the first-round pick Miami traded?
I was stunned when I saw the details of that first-rounder involved in this deal. I’ve struggled all season to pinpoint Rozier’s worth and whether teams would see him as an asset or a liability considering his contract (two more years and about $51.5 million left after this season). He’s played great this year but was much less effective on offense last season, and his poor defense is a real worry in high-leverage moments. Ultimately, Miami valued the offensive punch he’d bring strongly enough to cough up a future first-round pick to get him.
The devil is in the details, though, on that pick: It’s lottery-protected in 2027 and becomes unprotected in 2028 if not conveyed. It’s the latter portion that stuns me. If any first-rounder was going to be moved in a Rozier deal, I expected it to be one where the protection expired after one year as opposed to extending out for two. For a franchise perennially hunting for stars, that extra year of protection limits the number of future picks the Heat can move in a deal.
Is Rozier even worth the potential an unprotected pick transfers to Charlotte? It’s unlikely the Heat miss the playoffs in the 2026-27 season, but it hardly impossible. For as much organizational reverence as the Heat have rightfully earned, they did miss the playoffs in 2015, 2017 and 2019, which is how they ended up with Justise Winslow, Adebayo and Herro. They haven’t missed the playoffs in two consecutive years since Spoelstra took over in 2008, and they possess many institutional advantages that allow them to thrive in the modern NBA. But Butler will be 37 in 2027, and Adebayo will turn 30.
There’s enough of a risk the Heat flounder in the future that I would have preferred they reduce the protection on the pick for 2027 (maybe only top-seven protected instead of lottery protected) but have it expire then rather than carrying over into a 2028 unprotected selection. One issue: The Heat do not control any of their own second-round picks from 2027 onward, so they couldn’t structure the first-rounder’s pick protection as an “if” statement. (For instance: “If the pick doesn’t transfer in the first round in 2027, the Hornets will then receive two second round picks.”) Theoretically, the team could have tried to acquire second-round picks from another franchise in a separate deal before accomplishing this one, but that’s easier said than done.
It’s possible the Hornets would have simply turned down the deal if presented the option of a pick that expires within one year. But were they likely to get a better draft pick for Rozier from another team? I’m not so sure.
Given the defensive questions for this particular Heat roster, I’m not wild about giving up contract flexibility and potentially a highly valuable pick to acquire Rozier. But Miami has certainly earned the benefit of the doubt. (As John Hollinger notes, the Heat are still able to trade two first-rounders and up to four swaps on draft day.)
GO DEEPER
Hollinger: Terry Rozier move signals the limits of NBA trade market
This is a home run for Charlotte. What’s next?
Charlotte desperately needs to rebuild its roster around Ball, Brandon Miller and Mark Williams. I get that Mitch Kupchak, Charlotte’s president of basketball operations, doesn’t want to call this a “rebuild,” but that’s what it is. The team has to move on from a number of veterans who either have contracts expiring this summer or aren’t working out in the way the Hornets hoped.
That included Rozier, who, coming into this season, was seen as a player on a toxic long-term contract. At the time, a lot of people would have said the Hornets would be crazy to expect a first-round pick back for Rozier. It’s a credit to Rozier that the Hornets ended up in a position where they could cash him in for a good draft pick and start their roster retool around their core young players.
The Hornets have two roads they could possibly go down. They could allow Lowry’s contract to expire at the end of the season and use cap space to bring in veterans around their core trio plus their high draft pick this season. Given that Charlotte isn’t exactly a market with a proven track record in free agency, I don’t love this plan. The other approach, which I do love, is to use the large expiring contracts of Lowry and Gordon Hayward to acquire other teams’ undesirable long-term contracts in exchange for draft assets. They’d essentially “rent” out their cap space over the next couple of years, much like the Oklahoma City Thunder did after trading Paul George and Russell Westbrook.
For instance, the Hornets were reportedly interested in Grant Williams this past offseason. Would the Mavericks be willing to deal Williams, Richaun Holmes (who has a $12.9 million player option he’ll certainly pick up) and one of their younger players for Hayward? Hayward would be able to help the Mavs now and allow them to clear their books in the offseason. Or, who (or what) might the Warriors be willing to attach to Andrew Wiggins in a potential swap for Hayward to get off Wiggins’ money long term? The same goes for Lowry. Would the Raptors be willing to reunite with the Greatest Raptor of All Time and attach a pick to the two-year deals of Dennis Schröder and Chris Boucher to create more cap space this summer?
The Hornets should try to move Hayward and Lowry if they can while offering to take back longer-term contracts as long as they have draft picks and/or prospects attached to them. Then, move Miles Bridges and his expiring deal (though he can veto any trade and may not have much value), see what’s out there for P.J. Washington and go from there.
Undeniably though, the Rozier trade is the perfect start.
Get The Bounce, a daily NBA Newsletter from Zach Harper and Shams Charania, in your inbox every morning. Sign up here.
(Top photo: D.A. Varela / Miami Herald / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
