The Miami Heat’s 15-man standard roster is currently full, but the Heat still has a few open two-way contract slots.
However, one of the Heat’s three two-way contract spots is occupied by undrafted Michigan center Vlad Goldin, who formally signed his new two-way deal with the Heat on Wednesday.
Goldin also took part in his first summer league practice on Wednesday, with the Heat opening its summer league training camp in San Francisco.
“It shows that all the work I’ve been putting in since I was a child and as a student athlete, it just shows I’ve been doing the right things,” Goldin said Wednesday of his two-way contract with the Heat. “There are so many emotions I feel at the moment because I understand I’m doing something right and I’m just excited about that.”
Goldin, 24, is expected to make his summer league debut when the Heat plays the first of its three games at the California Classic on Saturday against the San Antonio Spurs’ summer squad at Chase Center in San Francisco (4:30 p.m., NBA TV).
“To be honest, I talked to some coaches and I ask them what they want to see from me,” Goldin said of the advice he has received from Heat coaches in the short time he has been with the team. “They tell me they want to see from me who I am and not trying to do things that I wasn’t doing. It’s a blessing to understand that this team wants you for who you are and not just to rebuild you.”
Goldin brings plus-size to the center position at 7-foot-1 and 250 pounds with a 7-foot-5 wingspan, and steadily improved throughout his five-year college career.
Goldin spent his first college season at Texas Tech before spending time in South Florida at Florida Atlantic for the next three seasons. He was the starting center on the FAU team that made an improbable run to the Final Four in 2023 before losing to San Diego State in the national semifinals.
That time at FAU even gave Goldin a chance to watch a few Heat practices, when the Heat held training camp at FAU’s home basketball arena in Boca Raton while he was playing for the Owls.
“I’ve kind of been around Miami because they had training camp at Florida Atlantic,” said Goldin, who is from Russia. “So that’s something that we’ve been watching, to be honest, all their practices and how they practice and how they act. It was definitely something that taught me and taught probably a lot of guys on that team — how the NBA looks like and what it takes to be in the NBA.
“We could watch it from the stands. So the only thing we could do was watch and take pictures after.”
Goldin then followed former FAU coach Dusty May to Michigan, where he averaged 16.6 points, seven rebounds, 1.1 assists and 1.4 blocks per game while shooting 60.7 percent from the field and 11 of 33 (33.3 percent) on threes as a fifth-year senior last season.
Some mock drafts had Goldin being taken in the second round of this year’s draft, but he ended up falling out of the draft and then committed to the Heat on a two-way contract as an undrafted prospect. Goldin didn’t work out for the Heat during the pre-draft process since he thought he would be a second-round selection and the Heat didn’t have a second-round pick this year.
“As soon as I talked to my agent and he explained to me how things are going, he explained to me that we’re probably going to sign a two-way and we’re probably going to look for the best opportunity,” Goldin said. “Then Miami came into the conversation and that was the best option I could dream about.
“Everybody knows about Miami and how they develop their players and they give chances to young players. It’s something that they’re known for. So it wasn’t the hardest decision of my life, but there were different options.”
The scouting report on Goldin indicates he’s a solid screener, an efficient player around the basket and a quality offensive rebounder. He shot an impressive 69.3 percent at the rim in half-court situations and averaged 2.4 offensive rebounds per game last season at Michigan.
“For a player of my size and my type of player, that’s what I’m going to try to focus on,” Goldin said. “Set good screens for my teammates and just kind of play for them.”
But Goldin didn’t take many three-pointers in college and there are questions about his defense at the NBA level.
“I try to be a team player first because I try to make my teammates better,” Goldin said of his approach. “If they can be more efficient scorers, if they can have less turnovers because I’m available in the right spot at the right time. Just trying to be the guy who knows what he has to do and who can be reliable.”
Two-way contracts, which pay half the NBA rookie minimum and do not count toward the salary cap or luxury tax, allow for players to be on their NBA team’s active list for as many as 50 regular-season games with other game action having to come in the G League. Two-way deals can be swapped out at any time and do not come with playoff eligibility.
If Goldin remains on the Heat’s roster past summer league and into the start of training camp in late September, there’s a chance that he could again be practicing at FAU. The Heat held training camp at FAU two years ago and there’s a possibility it could return to the Boca Raton campus for training camp this year, but it hasn’t been officially decided yet.
“I’m going to be honest, whenever training camp starts [and if it’s at FAU], I already know what I’m going to say,” Goldin laughed. “‘That’s my house!’ Or something like that.”