Head coach Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat looks on during the first half against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center on December 18, 2025 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Sarah Stier Getty Images
Despite trending in the wrong direction for the last two months, the Miami Heat opted against making any changes to its roster ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline.
The Heat moves forward with a roster that has gone 13-18 in its last 31 games following a strong 14-7 start to the season and now sits in eighth place the Eastern Conference at 27-25 this season. Since the start of December, the Heat has posted the NBA’s 23rd-ranked offensive rating and 10th-ranked defensive rating.
But the Heat, which is the only East team not to make a move before Thursday’s trade deadline, believes its best days are still ahead.
“League-wide, I think everybody is just glad that all of that is behind us,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said following Friday’s morning shootaround in Boston ahead of Friday night’s matchup against the Celtics. “And we can just focus on the next 30 games. We have great opportunities still ahead of us. We know what we have to work on is our consistency. We have a high ceiling, but we need to do it more consistently.”
That inconsistency has the Heat with just one set of consecutive wins since the start of 2026 and again on track to be a play-in tournament team.
After needing to qualify for the playoffs through the NBA’s play-in tournament (which features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference) in each of the last three seasons, the Heat is again in play-in tournament territory this season as the eighth-place team in the East.
But Spoelstra pointed to the fact that the Heat enters Friday with the NBA’s fourth-ranked defensive rating and as the league’s third-highest scoring team as evidence of the Heat’s “high ceiling.” But despite Miami’s high scoring amid its fast-paced play that creates more possessions, it ranks just 18th in offensive rating for the season when factoring in efficiency.
“I think we’ve shown this year we have a high ceiling. I’ve talked about it quite a bit,” Spoelstra said. “The fact that we’re third in the league in scoring and have a top-six defense shows you where we can go to, but we have to be a lot more consistent with it.”
Norman Powell #24 of the Miami Heat reacts to a three-point shot against the Phoenix Suns during the second half of the NBA game at Mortgage Matchup Center on January 25, 2026 in Phoenix. Christian Petersen Getty Images
The Heat went all-in on a pursuit of Milwaukee Bucks two-time NBA MVP and nine-time All-NBA forward Giannis Antetokounmpo leading up to Thursday’s trade deadline. Other than captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo, according to a league source, the Heat made the rest of its roster available in trade negotiations for Antetokounmpo and was willing to do what it took to get a deal done.
But the Bucks ultimately decided to keep Antetokounmpo at least for the remainder of this season.
The Heat also registered some level of interest in Memphis Grizzlies two-time All-Star guard Ja Morant, but never aggressively pursued Morant ahead of Thursday’s deadline for a myriad factors that include his contract, history of injuries and the fact that he would have away playing time from some of its young players, according to a league source.
Once the Heat didn’t land Antetokounmpo, it felt comfortable moving forward with its current roster for the rest of the season and didn’t see any other realistic trade targets who would play ahead of its core players. The Heat also didn’t want to make a lateral move that could take away playing time from its young core.
As for the idea of trading off a player on an expiring contract like forward Andrew Wiggins (player option of $30.2 million) for a first-round pick, the Heat was never offered a first-round pick for Wiggins, according to a league source.
The Heat also knew that its best chance of using guard Terry Rozier’s expiring $26.6 million salary in a trade ahead of the deadline was as a money-matching component as part of a larger trade. Once the Antetokounmpo deal never materialized, the possibility of dealing away Rozier’s salary also vanished.
Now that the trade deadline has passed, the Heat is still having internal discussions on whether to waive Rozier, who has been away from the team for all but one game this regular season in the wake of his Oct. 23 arrest stemming from a federal investigation into illegal gambling. Since the Heat already has one open spot on its standard roster, waiving Rozier would free a second roster spot.
“When it’s the trade deadline, once that’s coming up, I’m sure everybody whose name is mentioned is always wondering what’s going to happen,” Wiggins said. “But I love this organization. It’s been great to me, and I’m happy I’m here.”
The Heat’s response to not making a trade before Thursday’s deadline is the fact that it has already made multiple trades in the last calendar year, including the Jimmy Butler deal last February, and the trade to acquire Norman Powell and the trade of Duncan Robinson in July.
The Heat also remains firmly against taking a step back just for the opportunity of getting fortunate in the draft lottery to get a top pick.
“Guys got that weight off their shoulders, where they don’t know what’s going to happen to them,” Heat captain and center Bam Adebayo said of the exhale following the trade deadline. “It’s good to have that type of clarity. So now we can focus on basketball and try to stack these wins.”
One thing working in the Heat’s is it has a relatively soft schedule ahead. The Heat enters Friday with the NBA’s fourth-easiest remaining schedule, according to Tankathon.com, based solely on the current combined winning percentage of teams left to play.
“This is the team, this is who we have,” Powell said. “So we got to focus on what these next 30 or so games require of us.”
There’s also still an element of unknown surrounding the Heat, as the leading trio of Adebayo, Powell and Tyler Herro have played just eight games together this season in large part because of Herro’s injury issues. Herro has played in just 11 games this season, and missed his 12th straight game on Friday because of a rib injury.
“Look, we’ve had some guys missed games. But a bigger thing has been just our consistency,” Spoelstra said. “To be able to do our best level more consistently on the road versus quality teams, having more consistent quarters all the way throughout the game. First quarter, second quarter, and then this third quarter that we have to do a much better job with.
“Even with the things that have happened to us, we’ve shown that that ceiling can be very high. If we defend at a high level on any given night, we can blow the doors off offensively. But we have to do it a lot more consistently.”