Miami has already made one trade this week — it sent Dewayne Dedmon to the Spurs in a salary dump. While that move created more wiggle room under the luxury tax in addition to freeing up a roster spot, it also made it more complicated for the Heat to pull off additional trades, as Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald explains.

The Heat are highly unlikely to deal away Jimmy Butler or Bam Adebayo, Chiang writes. There are five players — Omer Yurtseven, Haywood Highsmith, Gabe Vincent, Max Strus and Udonis Haslem — on minimum-salary contracts, which are relatively difficult to move because the contracts are so small. Same goes for rookie first-rounder Nikola Jovic, who makes $2.24MM.

Dedmon’s $4.7MM contract might have been useful to pair with one of the minimum salaries to try and find a player in the $6-8MM range, but he was already dealt.

It would be challenging to trade Tyler Herro due to the poison pill provision — there’s a huge difference between his incoming and outgoing salary after he signed a four-year, $120MM rookie scale extension before the season started.

That leaves a small group of possible trade candidates, which includes Caleb Martin ($6.48MM), Victor Oladipo ($8.75MM), Duncan Robinson ($16.9MM) and Kyle Lowry ($28.33MM). Martin’s contract is team-friendly and he’s a starter, so it would take a lot to pry him away.

The latter three players are all currently injured, which complicates matters. Oladipo has the right to veto a trade, Chiang notes, while Robinson and Lowry are viewed as negative assets due to the size and length of their contracts, so the Heat would likely have to attach sweeteners to deal them.

Essentially, it probably makes more sense for the Heat to save their draft picks to upgrade the roster in the offseason unless something favorable comes up before tomorrow’s deadline.

Here’s more from the Southeast:

Even with last night’s loss in NO, the Hawks are 6-2 when all the rotation guys are healthy. If we could spend 2-3 future 2nds to turn Justin Holiday & Kaminsky into (Thybulle or Reddish) & Serge Ibaka that would strengthen our bench & our defense overall. I can’t see anybody offering enough to trade John rn. And tho Jalen Johnson has been the worst rotation player by a good margin he still just has too much talent & has shown enough growth that it’s too early to give up on him yet. We have 17 of our last 27gms at home & everybody healthy. Especially now with Kyrie out west I feel like we can beat any team in the conference in a 7gm series if we bring in another wing defender. If we have to go the play-in route again we’d be a hefty favorite no matter who/where we play. Nate seems like he’s on his way out tho. I’d love to see Kelvin Sampson next if that’s the case

Heat should try to inject themselves in the LAL, Utah, Min deal. Lowry heading to Minnesota with a 1st and Conley back to Miami. I think everyone could come out a winner.

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