Not a lot of people seem to be expecting the Miami Heat to contend in the Eastern Conference in the 2025-26 season.
The Heat are on the heels of a 2024-25 campaign during which they lost more games than they won to the tune of a 37-45 record. Miami then got totally obliterated in the opening round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs and looked helpless against the No. 1 seed Cleveland Cavaliers.
Still, former NBA guard Jeff Teague admitted that he likes the team heading into the coming season and even claimed that the Heat will be contenders.
“This year, they a contender,” Teague said. “The Heat gonna be a contender this year. I like ’em. I mean, the addition of Norman Powell, I think Bam [Adebayo] gonna take a leap, and then Tyler Herro got a little bit of — he got a little chip on his shoulder. I’ll never count Wig (Andrew Wiggins) out. Wig my dog. But I just think Tyler Herro gonna take a leap because people came at him. People gunned at him. You know what I mean?”
Teague specified that he thinks Herro will take that next step as a defender.
“I’m talking about defensively,” he said.
Even if the Heat aren’t perceived as one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference, perhaps a surprisingly successful season for the team isn’t out of the question.
Although Miami didn’t trade for a superstar this summer, Powell is a major addition, and he theoretically raises the team’s ceiling with his knack for scoring the rock. Powell averaged a career-high 21.8 points per game with the Los Angeles Clippers last season, and his presence will take some scoring pressure off the likes of Herro, Adebayo and Wiggins.
Plus, the Heat are no strangers to overachieving under head coach Erik Spoelstra. Spoelstra, one of the elite coaches in the NBA, always seems to maximize the talent at his disposal. Perhaps the most notable example of the Heat exceeding expectations came when Miami reached the 2023 NBA Finals as the No. 8 seed in the East in that year’s playoffs.
However, if the Heat want to be real threats in the Eastern Conference this coming season, they will likely need Adebayo to step up his game from a scoring standpoint compared to a season ago. The former University of Kentucky standout shot a career-low 48.5 percent from the field across 78 games played and averaged his fewest points per game since the 2019-20 season.
Hopefully, the Heat will shock the world once again in the coming 2025-26 season and end up being one of the more successful teams in the East.
