Pat Riley vocal on Heat’s need for ‘change’ to address health concerns

Riley said it was “hard to measure” the Heat’s roster last season

They once again finished at the eighth seed with another inconsistent season as they suffered from endless significant injuries from key players such as Jimmy Butler, Tyler Herro, and Terry Rozier, not to mention the other rotational pieces that missed time. Miami would finish top five in missed games and had 37 different starting lineups throughout the season, which ended up being a franchise record as Riley went into how it’s “hard to really measure your roster” when injuries pile up.

“Everything gets diluted what I mean by that, we talked a lot about continuity and consistency. And the players talked a lot about that to me in the my exit meetings with them on continuity, consistency and all that stuff,” Riley said. “Because when you’re you’re losing a myriad of players for extended periods of time, or even three or four games or whatever, and somebody comes in, like Tyler missed 40 games this year. So somebody came in and all of a sudden became very productive. You know, as Duncan got a lot more responsibility became one of our best pick and roll players and all of that stuff. And so when Tyler comes back, you know, a lot of players lose those minutes, but from from that standpoint, it’s sort of hard to really measure your roster.”

Riley said that outside help from players could be a factor

As Riley and even Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra mentioned last Friday, the organization is going to look into what they can do to rectify the health problems of the team. Injuries have always been a hurdle for teams to go through as Riley said, but even the figureheads on Miami notice a negative trend, possibly stemming from player’s outside help.

“I would love to have one through nine or one through 10 or whatever it is available. Give me 72 games I’ll take 72 at different times, but the NBA has to address all of this, it’s not just us having discussions with the training staff, talking with trainers,” Riley said. “The strength training staff, a lot of players have their own sort of off the court coaches, trainers and therapists and all of this stuff and who knows that somewhere something is conflicting with what we do here in our training room or in the weight room or with nutrition or mental health and whatever. So those are the dives that you have to do and those factors that how much can we control that I’m not going to ever accuse a player who can’t play that he doesn’t want to play or he’s not able to play. But there’s no such thing as 100% in the NBA.”

The Heat will have an integral offseason ahead of them as they look to bolster the roster while also keeping the foundation intact with players like Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. They’re looking to improve after back-to-back eighth place finishes and being knocked out in the first round of the playoffs.