Heat sign Avery Bradley to two-year, $11.6M deal

The Heat and free agent guard Avery Bradley have agreed to a two-year, $11.6M deal, agent Charles Briscoe tells Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).

The contract will include a team option for the second year, sources tell ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Twitter link). The Heat took a similar route with their new deals for Goran Dragic and Meyers Leonard as they prioritize preserving cap room for 2021.

The Heat will use a portion of their mid-level exception to sign Bradley. The Heat have also agreed to a one-year, $3.6M contract with Maurice Harkless, and Miami could preserve its bi-annual exception by splitting up the MLE between Bradley and Harkless, John Hollinger of The Athletic tweets.

Bradley was considered a fallback option for the team in case it couldn’t re-sign Jae Crowder, Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel tweets. While Crowder was a priority for the Heat, he wasn’t comfortable with only a one-year guarantee, says Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald (Twitter link). As a result, he’ll head to Phoenix on a three-year deal while the Heat replace him with Bradley.

As Charania explains (via Twitter), Bradley — who was recruited by Heat president Pat Riley and star swingman Jimmy Butler — was sold on the Heat’s culture and made the decision to leave Los Angeles after spending the 2019-20 season with the Lakers.

Bradley, who will turn 30 next Thursday, appeared in 49 games for the Lakers in 2019-20, starting 44 of them. He averaged 8.6 PPG and 2.3 RPG with a solid 3PT% (.364) and strong perimeter defense, but he opted out of the restart and wasn’t part of the club’s championship run.

The Warriors were among the other teams that had interest in signing Bradley, tweets Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area.