According to Five Reasons Sports, three of the Miami Heat’s five spots in their starting lineup are subject to competition as the 2024-25 season approaches.
“I was told this weekend that the Heat have two definite starters and the other spots will be subject to competition,” Five Reasons Sports reported on X.
While it isn’t totally clear which two players have their spots in the starting five guaranteed, one can likely assume that Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo are the players in question.
Butler was one of Miami’s primary scoring options last season. He averaged 20.8 points per contest during the 2023-24 regular season, which was tied with Tyler Herro for the highest scoring average on the team.
The 34-year-old also averaged 13.2 shots per contest. He shot 49.9 percent from the floor and 41.4 percent from 3-point range.
Butler was a fundamental component of the Heat teams that reached the NBA Finals in 2020 and 2023. In his first season in Miami, he helped the Heat reach the NBA Finals in the Orlando, Fla. bubble. Then, in the 2023 NBA Playoffs, Butler helped Miami get back to the championship series despite the fact that the team was the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Moving on to Adebayo, he may not always be the scorer that Butler is — particularly when the playoffs roll around and Butler turns things up a notch — but there aren’t a whole lot of better two-way players in the league today than the 27-year-old.
The big man is fresh off a season during which he averaged the second-most points per game of his NBA career and also was selected to the All-Defensive First Team.
It may be surprising to some that Herro’s spot in the starting five doesn’t appear to be set in stone considering how well he scored the ball in his fifth season in the pros. He was limited to just 42 appearances during the 2023-24 regular season but averaged 20.8 points per contest on 44.1 percent shooting from the field and 39.6 percent shooting from deep.
Assuming that Adebayo and Butler are guaranteed to start for the Heat, fans of the team should be interested in finding out who Erik Spoelstra will use to fill out the remainder of the starting lineup.