The Miami Heat may not have much to play for the rest of the year, other than the right to get eliminated in the first-round of the NBA Playoffs, but it's imperative they figure out if a frontcourt duo of Bam Adebayo and Kel'el Ware is ever going to work.
Perhaps more importantly, whether it's something that the Heat can keep building around heading into the future.
Because, right now, that's far from a certainty. Individually, it's easy to fall in love with the talents of Bam and Ware, respectively. However, if Erik Spoelstra can't figure out how to play them together, and on a consistent basis, there's really not much novelty to this 1-2 punch for the Heat.
Many fans believe both Bam and Ware to be building blocks of the future, but if Spo can't solve the riddle of playing them on the court together, perhaps it may be time to maximize one in a different way this offseason.
Whether Heat fans want to admit it or not, if Bam and Ware can't prove that they can co-exist in an effective way on the floor together, it may be the right move to trade one of them during the offseason.
The Bam and Ware minutes
So far this season, there hasn't been a huge sample size on Bam and Ware playing together, but that's why it has to be one of the goals for Spo the rest of the way.
But here's what the data says: Bam and Ware have shared the floor together for 290 minutes this season. They have a 0.6 net rating in those minutes. Compared to their season average, their offense roughly remains the same in those minutes. Their defense gets slightly worse, though, and that's probably the biggest reason why Spo has shied away from sticking to this lineup long-term.
There are clearly some schematic issues that Spo is working through when Bam and Ware share the floor, but the hope is that there is some sort of breakthrough soon.
In many ways, the revelation of whether Bam and Ware is something the Heat can truly build around will greatly define how the team decides to approach the offseason.
If we get to the end of the year, and the Bam-Ware pairing still looks and feels wonky, you can't help but wonder if the front office may feel it's time to hit the eject button on this experiment.
For a season that has brought little certainty for the Heat's future, there's no question they must figure out how to manage Bam and Ware moving forward, and whether this can truly be a long-term frontcourt of the future.