MIAMI — To this stage, it largely has been a season of discovery and therefore deferral for the Miami Heat.
With Tyler Herro coming off preseason ankle surgery, the decision on his potential extension was deferred until July.
At the trading deadline, with the Heat again in the gray area of good but not good enough, moves were put on hold.
All the while, one move that was in play remains in play — the possibility of an extension for All-Star forward Norman Powell before he otherwise heads in free agency this summer.
For the Heat, the Powell decision is similar to those mothballed with Herro and the trade deadline, namely whether what is in place needs to be augmented or, well, obliterated.
For his part, Powell has done his part, leading the Heat in scoring in Herro’s absence and earning his first All-Star berth.
During All-Star Weekend, Powell made clear he wants to stay. Now the question becomes whether, at the moment, an extension is in play.
For now, no urgency.
“It’s something I don’t even think about, honestly,” he said during his media session at Intuit Dome, site of All-Star Weekend in Inglewood, Calif. “I’ve said how I feel, how it’s been for me. I’m getting settled, acclimated, me and my family, how much I like that organization. So it’s out of my control. It’s a business. I’ll leave that to my agents and them talking to the front office and hopefully it aligns.
“I love Miami. I love the organization. So hopefully they like what I’ve been doing and the player and person I am, and get something done.”
And yet Powell also is well aware of how quickly situations, if not resolved, can turn.
Last summer, amid assurances from the Los Angeles Clippers of an extension – essentially the same extension he is eligible for now – he instead was dealt, in the deal the Heat sent out the contracts of Kevin Love and Kyle Anderson.
When he returned over the weekend for the All-Star events on the Clippers’ home court, his former team no longer looked anything like the one he left in July, with guard James Harden dealt at the Feb. 5 NBA trading deadline to the Cleveland Cavaliers and center Ivica Zubac dealt to the Indiana Pacers.
Now the Heat could find themselves amid similar deliberations, based on how the balance of the season plays out, currently seeded for a fourth consecutive trip to the play-in round.
With the Heat in a holding pattern at the trade deadline, there has been little hint of moving forward on an extension with Powell and locking in a player who turns 33 in May.
But this also is different from the extension question the team faced a year ago with Jimmy Butler, who at 35, hardly had embraced the Heat’s direction.
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“It’s been fun,” Powell said of the start of a Heat tenure he hopes to extend. ‘So hopefully there’s some good synergy from what they’ve seen that I bring to the table. And hopefully a deal is able to be done sometime.
“But yeah, I see myself being here and being a part of the Heat organization for however long they’ll have me.”
When there was no extension last year for Butler, there was nothing but anger, agitation and absence,
For Powell, the prime focus remains resolving the Heat’s inconsistency over the remainder of a schedule that resumes Friday night in Atlanta against the Hawks.
“Just analyzing how we can be better and the areas that I can improve in,” he said. “As a leader, the first thing you got to do if you want to make change and be the example for the team and how we need to play and what we want to go out and accomplish, you got to look inward. And so I’ve already had some thoughts and talks with my trainer, A.J., and what we kind of want to get accomplished in between now and when it’s time to return and play Atlanta, and how I need to come out mentally, and what I need to do to get this team on track. Conversations and things like that are already happening.
“And that’s just how my mind goes. I’m never content. I’m trying to always improve, and I’m trying to see how we can improve as a team. So that’s where my mind is kind of at.”
