University of Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr. reportedly is a “real option” for the Miami Heat in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft.
The Heat currently hold the No. 20 pick in the first round via their trade with the Golden State Warriors during the 2024-25 season. Miami sent Jimmy Butler to Golden State in the deal, but it does have a chance to make a first-round pick now in this draft because of it.
“So March 1st is when I first heard Walter Clayton Jr connected to the HEAT,” Five Reasons Sports’ Greg Sylvander shared on Discord.
“Now I’m hearing he’s a real option for them at 20. It’s early so we’ll see if noise or not but just passing along that his name keeps getting connected to Miami as I ask around.”
Clayton is fresh off of a great senior season at Florida where he led the Gators to the national title. After playing the first two seasons of his college career at Iona University, Clayton transferred to Florida and immediately showed that he was one of the top guards in the country.
In his junior season, Clayton averaged 17.6 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game while shooting 43.2 percent from the field and 36.5 percent from 3-point range. He took his game to a new level in the 2024-25 season, and it helped him earn All-American honors as well as the Most Outstanding Player award.
Across 39 games in the 2024-25 season, Clayton averaged 18.3 points, 3.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game while shooting 44.8 percent from the field and 38.6 percent from 3. He averaged 3.0 made 3-pointers per game on 7.8 attempts.
Since Clayton is a four-year college player, he is on the older side entering the draft. However, that hasn’t stopped the Heat before, as they picked Jaime Jaquez Jr. in the first round of the 2023 NBA Draft.
Clayton could be an intriguing option for a Miami team that needs more offense outside of Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo. Miami also could end up losing guard Davion Mitchell in the offseason, so Clayton potentially could help fill that void – if Mitchell leaves – in the rotation.
In the 2024-25 season, the Heat finished with the 10th-best record in the Eastern Conference during the regular season before making the playoffs as the No. 8 seed by winning two play-in tournament games.
The Heat are hoping to have more success than that in the 2025-26 season, but they’ll likely need to improve their roster in order to make that happen.