The Whiteboard: Power ranking the Miami Heat’s terrible contracts

The Miami Heat have some talent on their roster, but it quite literally carries a cost with it. Which of the Heat’s deals is the worst of the worst?

Usually, it is good to be at the top spot of a power ranking column. This is not a usual situation. The Miami Heat have approximately five bad contracts, and today’s Whiteboard is all about ranking them from bad to worse.

Six Heat players make $10 million or more this and next season. Out of those, all of them except Goran Dragic have been determined to be bad contracts. Dragic’s injury troubles this season may get him there, but the Dragon still feels like a valuable player when healthy, so we’re leaving him off.

5. Kelly Olynyk

Kelly Olynyk is making $12.5 million this season, $13.1 million next year, and has a $13.6 million player option for the year after that. According to the team’s net rating with and without him Olynyk does make Miami better, but he’s averaging 9.3 points and 4.3 rebounds per game while shooting 44 percent from the field and 33 percent from 3-point territory. This is one of Miami’s better bad contracts. Yikes.

4. Tyler Johnson

Tyler Johnson is not very good, but he can score a bit and is one of the better Heat shooters from 3-point range. He also looks like Mose from The Office, which seems like it has to be a positive thing. He’ll make $19.2 million this season, and probably the same amount next year thanks to a no-brainer player option.

3. Hassan Whiteside

Hassan Whiteside is not very good, but a desperate team that squints hard enough could probably talk itself into thinking he is, and that is worth something. Not as much as the $25.4 million Whiteside makes this season and his $27.1 million player option for next year, but something. Whiteside has scored more than 14 points per game just once in his career, and he’s averaging a washed Dwight Howard line of 12 points, 12 boards, and 2.4 blocks this season.

2, James Johnson

Following a 2016-17 season that saw James Johnson average 12.8 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.0 steals and 1.1 blocks per game, the Miami Heat generously gifted him with a four-year, $60 million contract. This season, despite being nearly a full-time starter, Johnson is averaging 8 points per game. The Heat are 8.5 points per 100 possessions better when they go from playing Johnson to not playing him. After this season there are two full years left on that deal, and each year is more expensive than the last. James Johnson can do a lot of things sort of well, which has not worked out sort of well for the Heat.

1. Dion Waiters

Dion Waiters makes the least annually out of any of these players, but his contract might still be the worst. Fresh off of an injury that caused him to sit out for an entire year, basically, Waiters is already yelling about not playing enough. He is currently shooting 36.8 percent from the field and 30.4 percent from 3-point range. He’s got three years and roughly $36 million still owed to him, including this season. A grumpy, out-of-shape, inefficient scoring guard with three years of eight-figure money coming his way is bad enough to be Miami’s worst contract, which is saying something.