Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Wesley Person

Wesley Person signed with the Miami Heat today.

"Wesley has proven throughout his career that he is one of the best and most reliable shooters in this league," said Heat coach Stan Van Gundy. "Obviously with Shaquille O'Neal in the post and Dwyane Wade penetrating, people are going to want to compact their defenses against us. We feel shooting is at a premium for us and today we signed one of the best shooters in the league."

Well, ok. The Heat are going to need outside shooters, and Person's still pretty good at that. But my assumption was that the Heat would:

1. Play many minutes with Wade at the point, Eddie Jones at the two, and Rasual Butler at small forward.

2. Play many minutes with Damon Jones at the point, Wade at the two, and EJ or Butler at the three.

Adding Person means shared minutes for all of those guys, and maybe it will work. There are 144 minutes to split between those three positions. So let's check that out. How many did each man play last year?


Wade played 35 minutes per game.
EJ played 37.
Jones played 25.
Butler played 15.
Person played 18.

That's 130 minutes, so Wesley fits. Of course, we haven't mentioned Keyon Dooling, who played 20 minutes a game last year. And where does this leave Dorell Wright? My money has him going down with some kind of back strain, and missing the entire year.

But I guess in the end I feel pretty good about this, because its a playoff run kind of move. EJ gets more minutes at small forward instead of trusting them to Butler, and Person is another veteran presence that keeps you from having to play Dooling or Wright. All of the young players may in fact pan out, but you would hate to have to count on them, and now the Heat won't.

In the end, I'll give the signing a B. There's the Piston and the Pacers, but I don't think there's another Eastern team that can touch the Heat right now. That makes a conference semifinal the worst the Heat should do, the conference final a real possibility, and the NBA Finals within reach, and we saw what the Pistons did with that opportunity. It's amazing what one little signing can do for moral. Go Heat!

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