The Miami Heat have a serious shortage of centers—unless they don’t. Sure, if they want to start Kel’el Ware alongside Bam Adebayo again, then yeah, things are awfully thin at the center, where’d they otherwise only have undrafted rookie Vladislav Goldin. While the first-year 7-footer held his own on the summer circuit, Miami would presumably prefer not to be in position of relying on him.
Maybe the Heat have different ideas for how to attack the 2025-26 NBA season, though. Given the lack of size on their roster, perhaps they want to spread out what they have and not cram it all into the opening group. By shifting Ware into a high-mileage reserve role and clearing a starting spot for breakout candidate Nikola Jović, they could cover up their depth issues and perhaps elevate their offense.
Bringing Kel’el Ware off the bench could have its benefits.
Let’s get one thing out of the way before anyone starts making their wrong, incorrect assumptions about this idea. Moving Ware from the starting lineup to the second unit is not at all a criticism about his ability or a question about his standing within the organization (which should be through the roof).
What it would be, rather, is a reshuffling of the pieces to perhaps better fit the puzzle.
While the Ware-Adebayo frontcourt fared just fine during its first season—plus-4.6 net rating over 50 games together, per NBA.com—there’s likely a cap on how good that combo can be offensively right now. That’s because Adebayo isn’t a floor-spacer, and Ware is only a shooter in theory (35-of-111 from range as a rookie).
Things could get cramped between the two pretty quickly, especially if there any spacing concerns elsewhere (like, say, Davion Mitchell remembering he’s only a 34.4 percent career shooter on low volume).
That worry would go out the window with Jović back in the first five. Certain elements of his game might still be adjusting to the NBA level, but his three-ball is already figured out. Over the past two seasons, he’s been a nightly source of 1.6 triples with a 38.3 percent splash rate.
That’s the kind of shooting threat opposing defenses must have on their radar at all times. And as long as they’re eyeballing him, they can’t pay as much attention to Adebayo’s attacks, Tyler Herro’s on-ball creations or Norman Powell’s savvy off-ball movements.
The Heat, of course, wouldn’t have the same defensive protection without Ware—who, by the way, could still average a boatload of minutes as the first-off-the-bench reserve—but they could make that trade-off if they felt the offensive gains were good enough. Plus, it’s not like this defense would collapse without him. Coach Erik Spoelstra is the best in the business, and he’d still have a pair of versatile shutdown stoppers in Adebayo and Andrew Wiggins.
Last season, the Heat were too imbalanced to make major noise: really good on defense, pretty punchless on offense. Close that gap and find good play on both ends of the floor, and suddenly the Heat have a chance to really climb the ladder in a scalable Eastern Conference.
Plus, they’d answer the question about their backup big man without having to find an external solution. And since this club is perpetually linked to external stars, it will need to stockpile all of the assets it can for what feels like an inevitable pursuit.
