The Miami Heat’s interest in DeMar DeRozan has never been the question. Nearly a month into NBA free agency, with the LeBron James chapter closed and three roster spots still open, the question is whether Miami’s patience is about to cost them the most accomplished scorer left on the market.
Sun Sentinel Heat reporter Ira Winderman wrote Wednesday that the Heat could still add a big-name veteran from a group headed by DeRozan, Klay Thompson and Bradley Beal, noting that “wheels are in motion, albeit perhaps not as quickly as some expect or want.”
The pace is the story, because while Miami deliberates, the list of teams willing to pay DeRozan real money keeps growing. What began as a comfortable fallback plan after James picked Philadelphia has turned into a four-team market in which the Heat, for all their history with DeRozan, hold one of the weaker financial hands.
The Wizards changed the market overnight
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Tuesday that the Washington Wizards have “had some conversations” with DeRozan in recent days, joining Miami, Denver and Cleveland among the teams pursuing the six-time All-Star. Washington has one open roster spot, sits just shy of $11 million below the luxury tax and still has its full non-taxpayer midlevel exception available, which gives the Wizards a cleaner path to a competitive offer than any of the other three suitors.
Miami Herald reporter Barry Jackson relayed the report Tuesday evening with the detail that matters most for Heat fans: The Wizards can put their entire $15 million midlevel on the table. Jackson added that however much DeRozan likes Miami, there is “no eagerness to take a minimum deal” from a player coming off a season in which he averaged 18.4 points per game.
That single sentence reframes the entire pursuit. The Heat’s connection to DeRozan has always rested on mutual interest, a thread that runs back to 2024, when he called Miami a serious option before signing in Sacramento. Mutual interest, though, has never been the same thing as a mutual number, and Washington’s entry exposes exactly how far apart those two things currently sit.
DeRozan’s number and Miami’s number don’t match
The Heat’s problem is not desire but capacity. As covered in our earlier report on the competition from the Nuggets and Cavaliers, roughly $8 million remains of Miami’s midlevel exception after the front office’s earlier offseason business, and multiple free agents have designs on some or all of that money. Against a full $15 million midlevel in Washington, Miami’s best available offer starts at barely half the Wizards’ ceiling, and that assumes the Heat commit every remaining exception dollar to one player.
DeRozan gives a team real production for that money. He appeared in 77 games for the Kings last season and averaged 18.4 points, 2.9 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game while shooting 49.7 percent from the field, per Basketball-Reference, though his 32.0 percent mark from three-point range remains the caveat that fuels the fit debate around a Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo frontcourt.
Sacramento waived him in early July with only $10 million of his salary guaranteed, a financial decision rather than a basketball one, and he has been the best unsigned player in the league more or less since. A scorer of that caliber declining minimum offers is not a negotiating tactic so much as a market reality.
Someone will pay him from a midlevel, and the only question Miami can control is whether it wants to be that team badly enough to spend money it has been holding for a different purpose.
The Klay Thompson factor
That different purpose has a name. Jackson spelled out the hierarchy Monday, reporting that Thompson remains the front office’s preference even though he is still under contract in Dallas.
As Anthony and I (and Ethan) have noted, Klay is Heat priority. DeRozan likes Heat and there have been conversations in past 72 hours, but as we reported Saturday AT LEAST 1 member of Heat decision making group wants to wait, though DeRozan has admirers inside that key Heat inner… https://t.co/OR1M1iodi0
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) July 27, 2026
“DeRozan understandably wants part of a midlevel and Miami might need that for Klay,” Jackson wrote, adding that everything remains fluid.
The Heat’s deliberate pace, in other words, is a bet that the Thompson door opens before the DeRozan window closes. It is a defensible bet given how directly Thompson’s shooting addresses the roster’s most obvious weakness, a need that has hung over the offseason since Norman Powell’s departure stripped out Miami’s most reliable perimeter scoring.
But it is a bet with a rising price, because the DeRozan market is not waiting for Dallas to resolve anything. Cleveland, which like Miami lost out on James, has kept working the wing market all week.
Chris Fedor of cleveland.com said on his Wind and Gold Talk podcast that the Cavaliers have expressed interest in DeRozan along with Denver’s Peyton Watson and Golden State’s Jonathan Kuminga, a reminder that the team with the most spending room under the first apron in this race views DeRozan as a live option rather than a courtesy call. Denver’s interest, first reported by Charania on Monday alongside Miami’s and Cleveland’s, rounds out a field in which every rival can either outspend the Heat or come close to matching them.
What happens next
DeRozan turns 37 on Aug. 7, and players entering their 18th NBA season do not typically let markets linger past the point of maximum leverage. The moment one of the four suitors puts firm midlevel money in writing, the conversations Miami has been having become a deadline rather than a dialogue.
The Heat have navigated this kind of squeeze before, and the front office’s history suggests it will not panic-spend the Thompson money on a fallback, however accomplished. What has changed this week is that the cost of patience is now explicit.
Washington can offer nearly double what Miami has left, Cleveland is actively engaged, and the player himself has signaled through the reporting that a minimum is not on the table. The target board the Heat drew up after James chose Philadelphia had DeRozan penciled in as the attainable name.
A week later, attainable is doing a lot of work in that sentence. If Thompson shakes free in Dallas, the wait will look shrewd. If DeRozan signs in Washington or Cleveland first and the Thompson situation drags into September, Miami will have spent the best month of its offseason protecting an $8 million exception that ultimately signed nobody.
Wheels in motion, as Winderman put it, only matter if they get somewhere before the market does.
