The Denver Nuggets’ decision to waive Jonas Valanciunas on Wednesday opened the door to a summer market that still has teams looking for size, but the Miami Heat are not among the clubs that have actually been linked to him in reporting.
That said, Miami’s roster does have a clear opening at center, and Valanciunas is the kind of veteran big who would make sense there on paper.
The Heat’s frontcourt picture changed when they acquired Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis from Milwaukee on July 6, a deal that sent Kel’el Ware out of Miami. Ware had been positioned as Bam Adebayo’s frontcourt partner and eventual successor, so his departure left the Heat thinner at a spot they were not exactly overflowing at in the first place.
Portis can play some center in smaller lineups, but he is naturally a power forward. And among the 10 players Miami had on standard contracts when free agency opened - Antetokounmpo, Adebayo, Andrew Wiggins, Portis, Nikola Jovic and Davion Mitchell among them - Adebayo was the only true center.
Since then, Miami has kept leaning toward the perimeter. The additions of Tim Hardaway Jr., Simone Fontecchio’s re-signing and the drafting of Ryan Conwell all point that way, leaving the backup-center question mostly unanswered behind Adebayo and Summer-League holdover Vladislav Goldin.
For a team trying to contend, that matters. Adebayo has been reliable, but the Heat do not have much proven insurance if they want to manage his workload over an 82-game season. Erik Spoelstra has always preferred to have answers ready, and this is the kind of spot where depth can disappear fast.
Valanciunas, at 34, would not be coming in as the nightly force he once was in New Orleans, but he still brings real value. In 65 games with Denver last season, he averaged 8.7 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.2 assists while shooting 58.2 percent from the field, according to Basketball-Reference. He played just 13.4 minutes per game behind Nikola Jokic, so the raw numbers only tell part of the story.
His rebounding rate still popped. Valanciunas averaged 13.6 rebounds per 36 minutes, which ranked eighth in the NBA.
The 6-foot-11, 265-pound Lithuanian has long been built around the same strengths: hard screens, efficient finishes at the rim and a physical presence that can punish smaller defenders. He was the fifth overall pick and owns career averages of 12.8 points and 9.0 rebounds per game from his time in Toronto, Memphis and New Orleans.
That kind of game would give Miami something different behind Adebayo. Portis stretches the floor.
Adebayo works in space. Valanciunas would be the bruiser, the back-to-the-basket option who can anchor a second unit and clean up the glass.
Still, the Heat are not the team most directly connected to him right now. The reported suitors are the Knicks and Lakers.
Marc Stein and Jake Fischer reported that Los Angeles had interest, while SNY’s Ian Begley and The Athletic’s James Edwards III reported that New York had kept him on its radar. Denver had also made Valanciunas available in trade talks dating back to the end of its season.
Both of those teams have since addressed the position elsewhere. New York signed Andre Drummond, and the Lakers agreed to a one-year deal with Kevon Looney. That could shift the market, though it does not change the fact that Miami has not been named in any reporting around Valanciunas.
There is also the Europe angle. BasketNews reported in late June that Valanciunas had committed to a two-year deal with Lithuanian club Zalgiris Kaunas if he cleared waivers, a return home he nearly made in 2025 before honoring his Denver contract. Stein and Fischer later wrote that his move back to Europe had become “a murky topic again” as NBA interest picked up.
If Miami were to get involved, the financial path would be narrow. ESPN cap analyst Bobby Marks detailed that because the Heat used more than 100 percent of the traded player exception to absorb Antetokounmpo’s salary, they are hard-capped at the first apron. Miami entered free agency roughly $18 million to $20.5 million below that line, but it has already used some of that space.
The Hardaway signing - a one-year, $6.5 million deal - and the Fontecchio re-signing ate into the flexibility, and the Hardaway move left Miami with only about $5 million of its mid-level exception.
In other words, if the Heat ever did make a run at Valanciunas, it would almost certainly be at the veteran minimum. That is a very different conversation from outbidding a rival or matching a European offer.
And the fit is not seamless. Miami’s defense is built on switching and versatility, while Valanciunas is more of a drop-coverage center who can be exposed in space. His playoff role in Denver reflected that reality: he appeared in four games in the Nuggets’ first-round exit and played about six minutes per night.
He also would add another non-shooter to a group that already includes Antetokounmpo and Adebayo, which cuts against the spacing Miami has tried to preserve.
So the idea is logical, but only in a limited way. Valanciunas would make sense as a low-cost regular-season stabilizer behind Adebayo. He is not a clean fit for everything Miami wants to do, and he is not a player anyone has actually reported the Heat targeting.
For now, the real links are to the Knicks, the Lakers and possibly Zalgiris Kaunas. Miami’s interest exists only as a roster fit worth considering.
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