It’s old news at this point that the Miami Heat have interest in acquiring veteran forward Jae Crowder, but a recent report definitely offers an update on the current situation.
According to a report from Heavy.com, Crowder’s current team, the Phoenix Suns, rejected a trade offer involving Heat sharpshooter Duncan Robinson.
“They’ve tried to see what’s there for Duncan Robinson but there really is not much of a market unless you get a team willing to play him for a year and try to flip his contract next summer,” an Eastern Conference executive told Sean Deveney of Heavy.com. “They tried with Phoenix for Jae Crowder, but Phoenix did not want Robinson.”
Earlier this month, it was reported that the Suns covet a rotation player in exchange for Crowder rather than merely future assets. Robinson surely fits that bill, but the doubts around how much he can contribute to a winning squad likely contributed to the Suns’ lack of interest in him.
Last season, Robinson saw dips in both his points per game average as well as his shooting percentage from beyond the arc. Though he averaged 42.7 percent shooting from deep between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, that number dipped to just 37.2 percent last season.
That’s certainly a cause for concern for a player who relies almost exclusively on his ability to shoot from deep to make an impact on the floor.
With that in mind, early indications in the 2022-23 season seem to show that his rediscovered his stroke. He’s currently hitting 50.0 percent of his shots from deep in the small sample size that is the current season.
If he can continue shooting at that kind of clip, it stands to reason that opposing teams will start to have more interest in him.
As for Crowder, he is currently not playing for the Suns as the team looks to trade him away.
Through three games, the Heat own a record of 1-2 on the season. They lost in their season opener to a dramatically shorthanded Chicago Bulls team and then fell to the Boston Celtics last Friday.
They did manage to log their first win the following day, however, with much-needed victory over the Toronto Raptors.
They’ll take on the Raptors once again on Monday evening before heading to Portland for the first leg of a three-game Western Conference road trip.