The Miami Heat’s Las Vegas Summer League championship run this past offseason was fun while it lasted, but it seems like a distant memory with a new NBA season already underway. But that summer league title won’t be forgotten any time soon, especially with four core members of that Heat summer league team on the Heat’s current NBA roster: first-round pick Kel’el Ware, second-round pick Pelle Larsson, and two-way contract players Josh Christopher and Keshad Johnson. hey’ve given us an exuberance.
But they’ve also found a way as a group to win, to impact winning, to find a way to gut out wins. I don’t know what it is, I just know it’s something. “I think probably what’s different about this group is it’s been a pack, a pack of wolves.
That’s what’s different.” The Heat drafted Ware with the 15th overall pick in June and he dominated summer league to earn a spot on the All-Summer League First Team. But the 20-year-old 7-footer currently appears to be the fourth center on the Heat’s depth chart based on the five-game preseason and the regular-season opener, playing behind starting center Bam Adebayo, backup center Kevin Love and third-string center Thomas Bryant.
Ware, who did not enter Wednesday’s regular-season opener for the first time until the Heat was trailing the Orlando Magic by 32 points with 6:15 left in the fourth quarter, did not travel with the team to Charlotte for Saturday’s game because of a stomach illness. “Just trying to do e.