With the Miami Heat’s 2018-19 season at an end, the uncertain status of the team’s veteran guard Goran Dragic becomes something to watch in the near future.
That’s because he could potentially opt out of the final year of his contract or could simply return to play for Miami and be paid $19.2 million next season.
Following the Heat’s 113-94 season finale loss at Brooklyn on Wednesday night, Dragic offered no hints about which course he might take:
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“I’m not going to talk about that now. It doesn’t make sense right now.”
While Dragic might consider negotiating a new multi-year deal either with the Heat or with another team, he’s going to consider all of his possibilities:
“I mean it’s tough, after injury and everything else. It’s a lot of factors. I’ll try to do what is best for my career, for my family. It’s going to require to talk a lot and see from there what’s going to be best.”
That injury to Dragic’s right knee, which resulted in surgery this past December, limited him to just 36 games on the season. He finished with averages of 13.7 points, 4.8 assists and 3.1 rebounds, but Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra admitted that the 32-year-old veteran still wasn’t 100 percent when he returned on Feb. 23:
“He wasn’t moving great. We really wanted to play Duncan [Robinson] and Yante [Maten] more minutes, so he volunteered that and he wasn’t moving extremely fast in the first half.
“But it also speaks to Goran and his commitment to being a real pro. He didn’t necessarily have to push the pace to get back as fast as he did, and he did. It took him a little bit of time to find his rhythm. It took him a little bit of time to get back into the starting lineup. But he was playing his best basketball the last couple weeks of the season.”
Dragic turns 33 years of age next month and will speak with people close to him concerning his plans:
“I’ll talk to my family, agent, just see what’s the best.”
While he enjoys life in Miami, Dragic knows that putting in some serious thought on the issue is necessary:
“I mean, if it would be a simple decision, probably I would already know now. So, yeah.”
Even if Dragic were to leave, it wouldn’t help the Heat’s current salary cap problems that limit their roster decisions. Those considerations will become easier during the summer of 2020 when both Dragic and Hassan Whiteside’s hefty salaries come off the team’s books.
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