The Denver Nuggets waived veteran center Jonas Valanciunas on Wednesday, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported, sending a 14-year big man into a summer market that still has a few contenders hunting for size.
One thing to make clear at the outset: The teams tied to Valanciunas in reporting are the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers, not the Miami Heat, and no beat writer has connected him to South Florida.
But Miami does have an obvious hole where a player like him would fit, which makes the idea worth examining on its own merits — even if, for now, it lives only on paper.
That hole traces straight back to the trade that reshaped Miami’s offseason.
The center vacancy Giannis created
When the Heat acquired Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis from Milwaukee on July 6, the outgoing package included Kel’el Ware, the young center who profiled as Bam Adebayo’s frontcourt partner and eventual successor.
His departure thinned a position Miami was not deep at to begin with. Portis can slide to the 5 in smaller lineups, but he is a power forward by trade, not a rim-protecting, glass-cleaning anchor.
There were 10 players on standard contracts as free agency opened, a group led by Antetokounmpo, Adebayo, Andrew Wiggins, Portis, Nikola Jovic and Davion Mitchell. Adebayo is the only true center among them.
Everything Miami has added since — signing Tim Hardaway Jr., re-signing Simone Fontecchio and drafting Ryan Conwell — has pointed to the perimeter, which leaves the backup-center question largely unanswered behind Adebayo and Summer-League holdover Vladislav Goldin.
That matters more for a title hopeful than for a rebuilder. Adebayo has been durable, but asking him to soak up heavy minutes across an 82-game grind with no proven insurance is exactly the sort of risk Erik Spoelstra likes to hedge.
The front office’s stated priorities remain a playmaker and more shooting, so the five is a secondary need rather than an urgent one — but it is a real gap all the same, and it is the gap a veteran like Valanciunas would, in theory, plug.
What Valanciunas would bring at 34
Valanciunas is no longer the nightly double-double force of his New Orleans years, but the fundamentals that made him useful have not eroded. In 65 games with Denver last season he averaged 8.7 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game while shooting 58.2 percent from the field, according to Basketball-Reference.
Those totals are suppressed by role — just 13.4 minutes a night behind Nikola Jokic — more than by decline. His rate production tells the fuller story: 13.6 rebounds per 36 minutes, a mark that ranked eighth in the NBA.
The 6-foot-11, 265-pound Lithuanian is a former fifth overall pick with career averages of 12.8 points and 9.0 rebounds per game, built across earlier stops in Toronto and Memphis and a productive stretch in New Orleans. He sets hard screens, finishes efficiently around the basket and overwhelms smaller defenders inside — a look Miami simply does not have right now.
Where Adebayo works in space and Portis drifts to the arc, Valanciunas would give a second unit a true back-to-the-basket presence, the kind of stylistic contrast that can round out a rotation otherwise built around shooters and Antetokounmpo’s downhill gravity.
Where Valanciunas is actually reported to be headed
Here is the part that keeps the Miami connection hypothetical. The suitors named in reporting are the Knicks and Lakers. Marc Stein and Jake Fischer reported that Los Angeles had shown interest, with New York keeping him on its radar per SNY’s Ian Begley and The Athletic’s James Edwards III, and that Denver had made Valanciunas available in trade talks dating back to the end of its season.
Both of those suitors have since addressed center elsewhere. New York signed Andre Drummond, and the Lakers agreed to a one-year deal with Kevon Looney. That could cool both pursuits — or, if either team still wants more size, keep it ahead of any newcomer in line.
Then there is Europe. BasketNews reported in late June that Valanciunas had committed to a two-year deal with Lithuanian club Zalgiris Kaunas should he clear waivers, a homecoming he nearly made in 2025 before honoring his Denver contract.
Stein and Fischer cautioned that the overseas pull may be less settled than it appears, writing that his return to Europe had become “a murky topic again” as NBA interest grew. Notably, no version of that reporting mentions the Heat. Any Miami angle here is a read on roster need, not a sourced link.
If Miami did make a call, the cap says minimum
Suppose the Heat did kick the tires. The math would cap the conversation quickly.
Because Miami used more than 100 percent of the traded player exception to absorb Antetokounmpo’s salary, the Heat are hard-capped at the first apron, ESPN cap analyst Bobby Marks detailed. Miami opened free agency roughly $18 million to $20.5 million below that line with several spots to fill, but it has already dipped into that room.
The Hardaway signing — a one-year, $6.5 million deal — plus the Fontecchio re-signing ate much of the flexibility. The Hardaway move left Miami with only about $5 million of its mid-level exception.
Absorbing Antetokounmpo’s contract had already pushed Pat Riley toward minimum-tier money to finish the roster. In plain terms, any Valanciunas pursuit would be a veteran-minimum flier, not a mid-level bid — fine for a low-risk depth add, but not a number that beats a motivated rival or a guaranteed European payday.
The fit isn’t clean either
Even setting money aside, the on-court marriage has friction. Miami’s defense leans on switching and positional versatility, and Valanciunas is a drop-coverage center who can be hunted in space. His postseason usage underscores the concern: He was nearly a non-factor in Denver’s first-round exit, appearing in four games for roughly six minutes a night.
And stacking another non-shooter next to two paint-first stars in Antetokounmpo and Adebayo runs against the spacing problem Miami just spent its cap room trying to solve.
None of that makes him a poor idea at the right price. It makes him a situational one — a regular-season stabilizer to protect Adebayo’s minutes, with the caveat that his playoff role could shrink against the switch-heavy defenses a contender has to beat in the spring.
The bottom line
Valanciunas fills a need the Heat genuinely have, and on a minimum deal he would be a reasonable way to shore up the position behind Adebayo. But this is a fit worth discussing, not a pursuit anyone has reported.
The names actually attached to him are the Knicks and Lakers, both of whom have already added bigs, alongside a Zalgiris Kaunas offer that may ultimately win out.
If the market thins and Valanciunas would rather chase a ring than a EuroLeague trophy, Miami’s need would make it a logical home. For today, that is a Heat Nation hypothetical — an honest look at a roster gap — and not a report.
