Precious Achiuwa was selected by the Miami Heat with the 20th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, but the big man only spent his rookie season in Miami before being dealt to the Toronto Raptors as part of the trade that brought Kyle Lowry to the Heat during the 2021 offseason.
Four years later, Achiuwa finds himself back with the Heat in a very different position after spending parts of three seasons with the Raptors and parts of the last two seasons with the New York Knicks. He has played in 23 playoff games and made three playoff starts since leaving the Heat.
“I think what I do differently now is I’ve been to the playoffs pretty much every year in my career,” said Achiuwa, who has played in the playoffs in four of his first five NBA seasons. “I’ve played a lot of playoff basketball and I’ve gained a lot of experience in that sense, just being able to compete at a high level. … I think that’s helped me grow as a player.”
But it’s not just the playoff experience that Achiuwa has added over the years that makes this second go-around with the Heat different. It’s also the fact that literally nothing is guaranteed for Achiuwa after signing a nonguaranteed one-year deal with Miami on Sept. 24 in the wake of going unsigned for much of the offseason.
Achiuwa’s contract begins counting toward the Heat’s salary cap, luxury tax and aprons if he’s still on the roster for the start of the regular season. His contract, which comes with a $2.3 million cap hit, becomes fully guaranteed on Jan. 10.
“A non-guaranteed is just where the league is at right now,” the 26-year-old Achiuwa said, with the Heat set to play its fourth of six preseason games on Sunday against the Orlando Magic at Kia Center (6 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun) before traveling to Atlanta to face the Hawks on Monday. “Teams are trying to figure out the best ways to move forward, how to stay out of the luxury tax and those kinds of things. All that stuff is going to eventually even out.”
For the Heat, bringing back Achiuwa is just the continuation of a developmental process that it intended to continue before trading him for Lowry.
In Achiuwa’s lone season with the Heat, he averaged five points, 3.4 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.3 steals and 0.5 blocks per game while shooting 54.4% from the field and 0 of 1 from three-point range in 61 games (four starts) as a rookie during the 2020-21 season. He began that season as a consistent part of Miami’s rotation before falling out of the rotation later in the year.
“We never had an opportunity to fully develop him,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Achiuwa. “There was a lot that we really liked about him. That speed and that athleticism, that jumps off the page. And I think he probably has a different perspective. Some of these discussions that we were able to laugh about it. Some of these a couple of weeks ago, actually a couple of days ago about how some of my mentorship with Kel’el [Ware] or Niko [Jovic] over the years, that was Precious his rookie year.
“There were a lot of ups and downs with Precious and the head coach. And we didn’t have that opportunity to take that next step, and I think we were primed to have a really good summer and take the next step and we have that opportunity now. I think he has a different perspective now being in a couple of different places, seeing where we’re coming from. That’s it’s coming from a place of love.”
Achiuwa learned a lot from his rookie season with the Heat. It was a unique season amid the COVID-19 pandemic that didn’t include a summer league and had Achiuwa in training camp just two weeks after being drafted by Miami.
“It was tough as a rookie coming in at 19, 20 years old to a team that had just come from an NBA Finals [in 2020],” Achiuwa recalled. “There was a lot of pressure, just came from the Finals. Obviously, trying to get back there. So coming in, I didn’t really have a summer to even develop with the team because I got drafted in November and the season started in December. So I didn’t really get a lot of time to learn the system.
“I had to learn on the go. I’m out there playing opening night, Christmas game. I was just thrown out there. So there were a lot of mistakes, a lot of errors, and a lot of learning in the process. There were a lot of ups and downs.”
Achiuwa averaged 6.6 points, 5.6 rebounds, one assist, 0.8 steals and 0.7 blocks per game while shooting 50.2% from the field and 10 of 36 (27.8%) from three-point range in 57 games (10 starts) with the Knicks last season.
So far this preseason, Achiuwa has played in two of the Heat’s first three exhibitions. He has totaled eight points on 2-of-4 shooting from the field and 4-of-5 shooting from the foul line, seven rebounds, one steal and two blocks 19 minutes over his two preseason appearances.
“Just play my game,” Achiuwa said of the Heat’s message to him this time around. “It’s not anything specific. Just go out there, be aggressive when I get on the court and just play and obviously understand the game. I’ve played a lot of basketball, so just read the game.”
The addition of Achiuwa (6-foot-8 and 250 pounds) adds some much-needed size to the Heat’s roster, joining Bam Adebayo and Kel’el Ware as the only centers on Miami’s standard roster for this season. Miami also has undrafted rookie center Vlad Goldin signed to a two-way contract.
Keeping Achiuwa around past Jan. 10 to guarantee his full salary would push the Heat over the luxury tax — a place Miami does not intend to be this season after finishing as a luxury tax team in each of the past two seasons — if the rest of the current roster remains intact. But the Heat has until the end of the regular season to avoid the luxury tax, as it will need to shed some salary to get under the tax threshold if it keeps Achiuwa on its roster beyond Jan. 10.
Whatever happens, Achiuwa is just happy to be back.
“I think there’s some unfinished business,” Achiuwa said of returning to the Heat.. “Just the culture of the Miami Heat kind of fits the way I play. A lot of tenacity, a lot of intensity. So I feel right at home here.”