Exploring the curious national dismissal of the Heat. And a roster update

An NBA team that acquires a generational two-time MVP — and brings back the best player on a team that had a winning record the previous season — typically wouldn’t have reason to feel overlooked or underestimated or in some cases, disrespected.

But with training camp just more than a week away, there’s an interesting dynamic in play with the Heat, with sentiment among several former players, popular pundits and Las Vegas sportsbooks not giving Miami the benefit of any doubt.

DraftKings sports book slots the Heat essentially in play-in position, giving Miami the East’s seventh-best odds of winning the NBA Finals, at plus-3000. (For betting novices, that means if you bet $100 on the Heat and Miami wins the championship, you would receive a $3,100 payout — a $3,000 profit and the original $100 better returned.)

Those odds rank behind the 76ers and Knicks (plus-900), the Celtics (plus-1300), the Cavaliers (plus-2200) and Toronto and Detroit (plus-2500).

Miami is also slotted behind the Spurs and Thunder (both plus-270) and Minnesota and Denver (plus-2500).

Then there was ESPN’s surprising and sobering power rankings released this week, predicting each team’s “on-court success for the next three seasons.”

A collection of analytically inclined ESPN writers and insiders ranked the Heat 14th in those three-year power ratings — the exact spot it was slotted a year ago, when Miami’s roster didn’t have a player anywhere near Antetokounmpo’s stature.

Among those rated ahead of the Heat by ESPN: Houston, Charlotte, Indiana and Atlanta.

Miami inexplicably was slotted six spots behind Charlotte, even though Miami has appeared in seven NBA Finals since the last time the Hornets won a playoff series in 2002, and even though the Hornets lack a single player with the gravitas and resumes of Antetokounmpo or Adebayo.

“Why are the Heat in the same spot in these overall rankings as they were last year?” ESPN’s Zach Kram wrote. “It’s because other teams improved around them and the Heat gave up so much in the Antetokounmpo trade — both in terms of picks and young players — that it’s unclear whether they’ll enter the top tier of championship contenders before the 31-year-old Antetokounmpo exits his prime.”

By contrast, “Charlotte’s current player score doesn’t reflect a top-10 ranking, but every other factor — most notably incredible draft and financial flexibility — reflects incredibly well on the Hornets.”

What’s overlooked is that the Heat will have three of its next four first-round draft picks and preserved the ability to use its full $16 million midlevel exception next summer.

ESPN is hardly alone in carrying fairly modest expectations for Year 1 of the Antetokounmpo era.

There was ESPN analyst Danny Green, albeit before the additions of Klay Thompson and Tim Hardaway Jr., calling the Heat roster “trash” and predicting “they’re not going to be good” and will end up in the play-in or the fifth consecutive year.

There was NBC’s Tracy McGrady saying Antetokounmpo cannot be given the ball late in close games.

There was former NBA center Olden Polynice declaring last week that the Heat had the most overrated offseason in the league — apparently overlooking that Miami acquired the best NBA player traded this summer.

“Gave up too many assets for Giannis,” Polynice groused. “Just too many. He and Bam are going to bump. That was a lot of assets and your future. This man already talking about ‘I’m going to finish my career in Milwaukee.’ You haven’t even played one game in Miami yet!”

There was former NBA forward Channing Frye asserting that Antetokounmpo doesn’t measure up to Joel Embiid from a skill standpoint:

“Giannis is a 7’0 running back. He’s just coming at you. If his ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, are injured, he can’t play his style. He does not have the skill set. Meaning shooting, middys, post ups, threes, to balance that out like Joel Embiid does. Joel when he’s injured, he can just shoot fadeaway and still get 30 points. Giannis doesn’t have that skill set because of his physicality.”

The somewhat surprising degree of skepticism extends to front-office types, too.

Bobby Marks, ESPN’s front-office insider, reiterated this week that the Heat isn’t a championship-caliber team — at least not yet.

“The question for me is, is there enough playmakers on the court? Enough spacing?” Marks said. “A lot of the playmaking last year was with Tyler Herro at the end of games. I think they’re better, but I’m not ready to put them as a championship-level team right now.”

The Ringer’s Zach Lowe said Miami is “pretty damn good” but “they still just don’t have enough really good players to win three playoffs series in the East. I still don’t think they are a contender to get to the Finals.. My question is do they have enough off-the-dribble shot creation around their two big guys.

“You might have to go back to the Demarcus Cousins/Anthony Davis Pelicans where the two best off-the-dribble creators on the team were big guys in Giannis and Bam. All their pull-up shooting went out the door in free agency with Norman Powell or Tyler Herro in the trade.”

Marks and Lowe make reasonable points in questioning the playmaking. As we’ve written, the Heat doesn’t have the type of late-game three-point markmans/playmaking assassin that most of the top teams do.

But the modest expectations for the Heat seem a bit odd, considering Detroit and Boston got worse this offseason (and yet are still ranked ahead of the Heat by oddsmakers) and considering Toronto’s Kawhi Leonard and Philadelphia’s Embiid have missed far more games than Antetokounmpo has over the past five years.

The quick dismissal of the Heat, by some, also overlooks this: Miami has made the Eastern semifinals or Eastern finals or NBA Finals in eight of the past 10 seasons when the franchise had an in-his-prime star on its roster and available for the playoffs. Those eight seasons included six Finals appearances and seven Eastern finals appearances (four during the Big 3 era, but another three when Jimmy Butler was Miami’s best player).

So be careful about selling the Heat short, even if this roster might be one creative wing player short.

“They did a really good job putting this team together for sure,” Heat guard Davion Mitchell said on his social media feed.

Mitchell later turned to teammates with a message: “We already champions, so let’s start acting like it” — even if outsiders are already throwing cold water on that notion.

This and that

Though veteran guard Gabe Vincent would welcome a Heat reunion, the Heat hasn’t made an offer to him. A strong case could be made for extending him a nonguaranteed deal to compete with Dru Smith in training camp, but Miami hasn’t presented that option. (That would not preclude Miami from signing another player to a 15th standard contract.)

The Knicks this week signed five veterans to nonguaranteed deals to compete for one or two roster spots: Bruce Brown, John Konchar, James Wiseman, Drew Eubanks, Ochai Agbaji.

The Heat, which is hard-capped, added Nick Richards on a nonguaranteed deal but otherwise seems to be holding onto a spot in case something needle-moving shakes free on the buyout market in the months ahead.

The Heat has 18 players under contract and can bring as many as 21 to camp; two of those three open spots are expected to be training camp invitations for Clemson forward Ian Schieffelin (who worked out with Antetokounmpo and Heat players in Los Angeles last week) and former Southern California forward Ezra Ausar.

The Heat offered a similar training camp invite to former Kansas wing Tre White, but he’s part of a lawsuit seeking another season of college eligibility.

Sharp-shooting guard Trevor Keels — who spent the final two months of last season on a two-way contract with the Heat — accepted a training camp invitation with Washington on Thursday, a day after the Heat’s G League team traded his G League rights to the Wizards’ G League team.

▪ The Sioux Falls Skyforce received veteran center Mo Bamba in that trade, but it’s undetermined if he will play for Skyforce. The Utah Jazz own Bamba’s NBA rights, though only a portion of his contract is guaranteed.

▪ Rob Fodor, the Heat’s shooting coach for the past 10 years, left to join former Michigan and FAU coach Dusty May’s staff with the Dallas Mavericks. The remainder of Spoelstra’s coaching staff is expected to return, and Spoelstra added one coach to his staff — former Bucks assistant Vin Baker, who has a close relationship with Antetokounmpo.