(Mandatory Credit: IMAGO / ZUMA Press Wire)
It has finally arrived! The Miami Heat completed media day on Monday and begin training camp in Boca Raton, Fla., at Florida Atlantic University on Tuesday. What are a few of their key storylines heading into the 2025-26 season? Let’s examine!
Who will be team’s fifth starter?
At the start of the season, one could presume that Davion Mitchell, Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins and Bam Adebayo are four of the team’s five starters. That will inevitably change upon Tyler Herro’s return. However, one of the biggest unknowns throughout the summer is who’s the fifth-and-final starter between Nikola Jovic and Kel’el Ware.
Ware started 36 games last year, while Jovic started just 10. The latter was a “scapegoat” at the start of the regular season and was eventually moved to the bench, even though the starting lineup’s shortcomings weren’t necessarily his undoing. Ware showed flashes, but wasn’t consistent. Miami’s spacing was poor when he and Adebayo shared the floor together, and that doesn’t figure to be much different without Herro.
Head coach Erik Spoelstra isn’t afraid to mix-and-match. We’ll see who ultimately wins that job — and if there’s a surprising lineup with a name we aren’t expecting.
Can Heat find new identity in first year without Jimmy Butler?
Miami did not have any sort of identity after trading Jimmy Butler last February. They sputtered over the second half of the season, going 12-17 — with their fatal flaw being the inability to close games. More importantly, the Heat weren’t disruptive defensively and weren’t mentally tough enough to play a consistently good full 48.
In their first full season without Butler, who helped lead them to three Eastern Conference and two NBA Finals berths, they will need to find their identity. It’s still unknown, and Spoelstra is currently embracing that. But what is unknown now won’t be forever, and every team with an uphill trajectory has some sort of identity.
Can the Heat get back to their blueprint as being the toughest, meanest, nastiest team in the NBA? Or will they unlock a different identity with this new-look group? We’ll see!
How will youth movement progress?
After being one of the NBA’s oldest rosters a year ago, they will be rolling out a fairly young roster in 2025-26. That doesn’t mean they will lean completely into their youth. But they have a number of intriguing young players, including Jovic, Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Pelle Larsson and Davion Mitchell, who blossomed in 30 games with the Heat last season.
One way or another, Miami must figure out what it has with this young core. How will they individually — and collectively — progress in 2025-26? How they are maximized in this context will be quite important, and it should be very interesting to hear which of those players will earn Spoelstra’s trust early in the season.
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