Miami Heat make puzzling pick
Thursday’s NBA Draft for was a puzzling one for Miami Heat fans. The 2006 NBA champions drafted two players and traded them both – one for Ohio State University’s Daequan Cook, the other for a 2009 second round pick.
Daequan Cook, who had been one of the driving forces behind the Buckeyes’ surge to the Final Four, promptly fizzled in the last two games of the season. Daequan Cook scored just two points each in the national semifinals against Georgetown and in the championship game against Florida.
He is heralded as one of the better shooters coming out of the draft, having hit 41.5 percent of his three-pointers last year.
Daequan Cook can also finish around the basket and is 6-foot-5, but the consensus was he needed more seasoning in college.
But the pick is more dumbfounding because of the position Daequan Cook plays: shooting guard. In other words, the same position as Dwyane Wade. Considering the fact Dorrell
Wright is another athletic swingman who can back Wade up, this would seem to be a strange pick.
The Heat were hamstrung by the fact that none of the three point guards the team coveted were available, thanks to the Los Angeles Lakers making the bizarre decision to draft a point guard for the second straight year – Georgia Tech’s Javaris Crittenton – just one spot ahead of the Heat.
Miami selected Colorado State’s Jason Smith, a player who could have helped at a position of need, power forward, but traded him away for the rights to Daequan Cook.
The question is, if the Heat didn’t like what was available at their pick, why not trade up to try and acquire a player who could make an impact, or trade out of the round altogether.
In a draft with this much talent at the top, the Heat could have packaged proven players like Jason Williams and Antoine Walker to move up, or they could have sent one of those players and their 20th pick to another team.
Maybe teams were wise to the fact none of the aforementioned players could make a big impact and shied away, but the Heat could have done better to improve a rapidly aging team.
That just leaves the possibility of free agency as a last resort to fix the team’s ills, but the Heat have no chance at a game-changer like Kevin Garnett or Amare Stoudemire.
Yes, Daequan Cook is a shooter, and with Jason Kapono about to become a free agent, maybe this is a hint that he may not be back.
But the Heat did not address any of their need positions of power forward/center or point guard.
Miami has other free agent decisions to make, such as whether to re-sign Posey, and there is still the question of whether Alonzo Mourning, Gary Payton or Eddie Jones will return, as their contracts have all expired also.
Pat Riley’s affinity for veterans and his willingness to stand “pat” are a poisonous combination for a team that is looking to avoid growing old before its time.
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