The Miami Heat are reportedly weighing a run at Ja Morant, a move that New York Knicks fans rooting for Giannis Antetokounmpo to land in the Big Apple should be hoping their South Florida nemesis pulls off yesterday.
Not everything in the NBA is this connected. In this case, however, the Knicks will need a ton of help if they are going to emerge as winners of the inevitable Giannis sweepstakes.
Perhaps most importantly, they will need other teams to deliberately or incidentally remove themselves from the running. The Heat would be doing just that if they act on the “internal discussions” that Jake Fischer of The Stein Line reports they’ve held about Morant.
The Knicks would be sitting prettier if the Heat go after Morant
We don’t need to waste too much brainpower wondering whether the Heat can beat the Knicks’ best offer for Giannis. They can. They may not have the best package around, but they can peddle multiple first-round picks, and intriguing youngsters. New York currently has the ability to offer none of those things.
Any Morant package will require Miami to dip into its asset stash. The exact combination is unclear. Morant’s value is at its nadir amid shaky play, and availability. But neither the Heat nor anyone else is getting him for nothing. They will emerge from that transaction without the bandwidth to build a real offer for Giannis—unless they’re planning on conceding Bam Adebayo. And even then, he alone may not be enough.
This would ostensibly remove one of the biggest threats to land the two-time MVP from the discussion. The Heat are forever linked to available superstars, and like Fischer notes, he has (potentially) been intrigued by them for more than a half-decade.
New York needs other teams to bow out of the Giannis chase
To what extent we should buy Miami’s interest in Morant is debatable. The Heat have revamped their offense to include fewer conventional ball-screen sets. They even added former Memphis Grizzlies assistant Nick LaRoche to head coach Erik Spoelstra’s staff to help oversee the overhaul.
Morant bristled at a similar offensive adjustment last season—a functional recalibration in part led by LaRoche. It’s not clear whether he’d have a change of tune if he’s rocking a Heat jersey instead of a Grizzlies uniform.
This rumor is nevertheless a win for the Knicks. It at least suggests Miami isn’t sitting around waiting for the Giannis situation to resolve itself. New York now needs other potential suitors to follow suit.
Both the San Antonio Spurs and Atlanta Hawks loom largest here. Neither is likely to make another trade, but they could make certain players and assets off limits that would benefit New York.
Sure, Atlanta can still build a real package without Jalen Johnson, or without including the most favorable of the Milwaukee Bucks’ own and New Orleans Pelicans’ 2026 first-round pick. Ditto for San Antonio if it puts red velvet ropes around Stephon Castle, and Dylan Harper. But those resulting offers wouldn’t so obviously outstrip what the Bucks could get from the Knicks now, or over the offseason.
Combine a more limited than expected Giannis market with what is, as Fischer notes, his enduring desire to land in orange and blue, and who knows, New York might just have a better chance of landing him than any reasonable mind could have predicted. We will know, for sure, if and when these other dominoes start to fall.