Heat Notes: Ellington, East, Giannis, Morant, More

Wayne Ellington says “it was an easy decision” to rejoin the Heat when he started his coaching career in 2023, writes Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald. The former NBA shooting guard played for nine different teams during his 13 years in the league, last suiting up for the Lakers in 2021/22.

Ellington, who had some of his best seasons as a player in his two-plus years with the Miami under head coach Erik Spoelstra, will be the Heat’s summer league coach in July for both the California Classic and the league-wide competition in Las Vegas.

“This is the next step in my journey, and I’m super excited for it,” Ellington said Friday during a teleconference with a few South Florida reporters. “I’m super appreciative of the opportunity and the confidence that Spo and the front office has in me, allowing me to do this this summer. So I’m looking forward to it.”

As Chiang notes, Ellington was a player development coach in his first year on the Heat’s staff and has been an assistant the past two seasons. The 38-year-old, who is one of four former Heat players on Spoelstra staff, says he’s learned a lot over the years from his own coaches and aspires to become a head coach.

“Obviously, my next step is to be a bench coach. And then, yeah, I do have the ambition to be a head coach one day,” Ellington said. “I’m still growing and still learning, obviously. But that is my goal in the end.”

Here’s more from Miami:

• The way the Eastern Conference playoffs transpired, Heat president Pat Riley may have been right in his belief that the team wasn’t as far from making another trip to the NBA Finals as it appeared on the surface after a 10th place finish and a quick play-in exit, according to Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel. Riley expressed a belief that Miami could have been a player (or a few lucky breaks) away from being near the top of the conference. “I think we were competitive as hell,” Riley said at his end-of-season press conference last month. “Yes, do I think we might have got up there? The only two teams that I would consider that I would be uncomfortable playing against would be OKC and San Antonio. And they’re out there (in the Western Conference). But if I can get into the (NBA) Finals, just like we did in ’23, then I would be happy.” As Winderman writes, while the Knicks were absolutely dominant in their run to the finals, they were also fortunate in the sense that they didn’t have to play the Pistons (who swept New York during the regular season) or Boston, and will now face their third straight opponent coming off a seven-game series.
• In a mailbag column (subscriber link), Winderman observes that the Heat are in a tricky spot from a salary-matching standpoint if they try to trade for a star player like Giannis Antetokounmpo, since Tyler Herro is the only mid-to-large salary currently on their books aside from Bam Adebayo, who is said to be off limits. Still, Winderman thinks it’s a good time for Miami to make a trade from an asset perspective, since the team has some appealing young players who may or may not continue to improve. He also answers a question about whether the Magic would be able to trump the Heat’s offer for Antetokounmpo if Orlando includes a package headlined by Paolo Banchero.
• In another subscriber-only mailbag, Winderman says the Heat shouldn’t offer any draft picks to the Grizzlies if they pursue Ja Morant as a fallback option. In fact, Winderman says he would require Memphis to take on Nikola Jovic’s four-year, $64MM extension to offset some of the money owed to Morant. Herro would still likely have to be involved in that framework though, Winderman notes, likely in a multi-team deal, which makes it less appealing from the Heat’s perspective.