NBA Rumors: Heat Opted To Keep Slovenian Guard After Whiteside Deal

Goran Dragic of the Miami Heat is one of the multiple players rumored to be on the block. Seeing that their investment has not exactly produced well, word came out that at least four players would be traded at some point this year. So far, only one has gone and this is Hassan Whiteside who is now with the Portland Trail Blazers.

If one rewinds a bit, Dragic would have been dealt as well. The Slovenian unsurprisingly exercised the player option although most felt that this would not stop the Heat from trading him. That almost went down in June before a miscommunication forced the Dallas Mavericks to back out.

“Of course, the next day, in the morning, I received a lot of texts. It was a little bit crazy, because at first you didn’t know if the deal went through or not. So a lot of my friends called me and were asking me. But I did not have a clue, because I had just woke up,” said Dragic in a report from the Miami Herald.

The original point on trading away some stars was to fulfill financial obligations to complete the sign-and-trade deal for Jimmy Butler. The Whiteside trade ended up being enough, meaning there was no need to trade away Dragic. However, the fact that the 33-year-old is in his final year could still sway the Heat to dangle the Slovenian at some point of the 2019-20 NBA season.

The 45th overall pick of the 2008 NBA Draft will be earning $19.2 million this coming NBA season. He will become a free agent next summer and it doesn't appear like Miami will be looking to keep him. In a previous post, he was one of four players who owned massive contracts that the Heat were allegedly planning to deal away. Aside from Dragic and Whiteside, Dion Waiters and James Johnson were other names reportedly being dangled to interested teams. So far, no ballclub has expressed interest.

It is likely that the Heat and other teams will first see how things go when the 2019-20 NBA season opens. Player movement could happen before the February trade deadline, meaning Dragic, Johnson and Waiters are still not in the clear.