Building contending rosters for the ages is nothing new for Pat Riley. Over the years, it has been older players who have rounded out the Miami Heat’s championship success.
But the reality, nonetheless, is the inherent risks with older players.
That is where the Heat stand going into Saturday’s 8:30 p.m. Game 3 of these Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Celtics.
The latest concern is with 37-year-old power forward P.J. Tucker, who briefly left the Heat’s Tuesday Game 1 victory at FTX Arena with an ankle sprain, and then exited for good in the third quarter of Thursday night’s Game 2 blowout home loss with a knee bruise.
The ongoing concern is with 36-year-old point guard Kyle Lowry, who has missed the past two weeks with a hamstring strain that earlier also had him out this postseason.
While Lowry missed only a single game due to injury during the regular season — an ankle sprain in the October road opener — this latest absence has been amplified by Thursday’s breakout return of Celtics point guard Marcus Smart. He closed with 24 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds in Boston’s 127-102 Thursday victory that evened the best-of-seven series at 1-1 after missing the series opener with a midfoot sprain.
Asked after Thursday night’s loss if he had an update on Lowry, who has missed eight of the past 10 games with the hamstring issue initially sustained April 22, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra only said, “still don’t.”
A team spokesman then added, “He’s making progress,” with the Heat taking Friday off ahead of Saturday night’s game at TD Garden.
As for Tucker, Spoelstra merely pointed to the resilience of his starting power forward.
“If you ask him,” Spoelstra said, “he says he’s good to go. We’ll just have to see. I’ll talk to the trainers.”
In Tucker’s case, it is more of an issue of test results, with Yahoo Sports reporting a scheduled Friday MRI.
“I think he’ll be all right,” Heat forward Jimmy Butler said. “If he’s not ready to go, though, everybody else has to be ready to go. Those are some even bigger shoes to have to fill, because he does it on the defensive end. We’re capable of it, though.”
With the exception of a leg issue in December, Tucker largely had a healthy season, missing a pair of games with a knee irritation at midseason and then sitting out three of the final four games as the Heat wrapped up the conference’s No. 1 seed.
Each of the Heat’s championship iterations has featured older veterans, from Ray Allen to Shane Battier to Rashard Lewis to Gary Payton to Shaquille O’Neal.
But those components largely were complementary pieces.
With this season’s roster, Lowry and Tucker are starters, essential components.
Without Tucker, there mostly are replacement options who have either struggled of late or not played, such as Caleb Martin or Markieff Morris. There also would be the options of going big, with more time for backup center Dewayne Dedmon, or smaller, with Butler moving into a power role and an additional wing added to the mix.
In Lowry’s place, there has been the encouraging, but still neophyte, play of Gabe Vincent.
That, Butler said, might require a change of focus to more of a playmaking role.
“You know, I’ve got to basically do Kyle’s job and make sure guys are in spots where they can be comfortable and be the most successful,” Butler said. “That’s on me. I don’t think that’s on Spo.”
The question becomes how much of Butler the Heat can continue to ask or require.
“I think I got a bit selfish on the offensive end,” Butler said of his 70-point start over the series’ first two games. “I got to look to use my teammates. They have been there for me all year long, and I got to get back to that because whenever they are scoring, whenever they are aggressive, we are a much better team.
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