With Heat linked to another All Star, here’s what must be considered. And personnel notes

A six-pack of Heat notes on a Tuesday:

▪ It has become an NBA tradition but ultimately a fruitless and mostly unsatisfying exercise in recent years: The Heat is linked to an All Star player who has been made available in trade talks. And that player ultimately ends up elsewhere.

While Yahoo reported last week that Miami and the underachieving Atlanta Hawks had a preliminary conversation about guard Dejounte Murray (a 2022 All Star and 2018 All NBA Defense selection), neither Miami nor any team has offered the two first-round picks that the Hawks have requested, as reported this week by The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor.

One person in touch with the Heat’s front office expressed skepticism about the likelihood of the Heat making a particularly aggressive push for Murray, without knowing for sure what Miami would do.

At a season-best eight games over .500 (24-16), the question is whether the Heat deems it necessary to do anything significant before the Feb. 8 trade deadline, or play this out (for perhaps a final time) with this nucleus.

But Murray - in his prime at 27 - has the type of skill set (solid defender, skilled ball-handler and scorer) that would in general appeal to Miami. And ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski said chances are “very, very high” of Murray being dealt somewhere before the Feb. 8 trade deadline.

ESPN’s and Andscape’s Marc Spears reported Monday that “the Hawks are in the exploratory phase of trading Murray, who is getting strong interest due to his play on both ends, great image and manageable contract.”

Spears added that “Murray has said he would welcome interest from the Spurs in an NBA TV interview, and there have been reports that the Los Angeles Lakers, Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors are intrigued, too.”

Unless it’s receiving a perennial All Star (and Kyle Lowry was a six-time All Star when he was acquired), the Heat generally has been content standing pat the past two-plus years. Miami hasn’t made a major trade since acquiring Lowry 30 months ago.

That decision stems from a few factors:

1) A desire to give this Jimmy Butler/Bam Adebayo/Tyler Herro troika a sizable stretch to prove they can win a championship after just falling short twice.

2). A determination to keep Herro unless he can be used to acquire a top 75 All Time type player, according to Herro’s portrayal of what the team told his agent last summer.

3). The fact that teams dangling an All NBA type player generally have asked for Adebayo when the Heat has inquired. That’s obviously a non-starter for Miami.

4). A reluctance to trade a first-round pick for anyone who isn’t an All Star caliber player.

5). Portland’s refusal to engage Miami in talks on Lillard, and Brooklyn’s willingness to deal Kevin Durant to his preferred destination last year (Phoenix). And as we and other have reported, the Heat didn’t want to inherit Bradley Beal’s no-trade clause when the Heat and Wizards spoke last June.

There’s a sixth more recent factor: The NBA’s new labor agreement creates punitive competitive restrictions for teams well above the luxury tax line, on top of the onerous financial consequences already in place.

Here’s how that would affect the Heat in a hypothetical Murray pursuit: If Miami were to offer Kyle Lowry, Nikola Jovic and two first-round picks for Murray, the Hawks also would need to include Patty Mills’ and Wesley Matthews’ expiring contracts.

Not only would that specific hypothetical deal increase the Heat’s tax bill by more than $15 million this season (topping $40 million), but it would leave the Heat with $173 million committed to 10 players next season, when the luxury tax line is projected to be $172 million and the punitive ‘second apron’ at $190 million.

Miami wouldn’t be able to re-sign Caleb Martin or Haywood Highsmith without going deep into the tax and would essentially be left without a power forward on its roster. That’s the negative with including Lowry’s expiring contract (he’s due $29.6 million this season) in a trade for a player with multiple years left on his contract.

So though such a hypothetical trade would benefit the Heat this season, it would create financial complications that would be restrictive next season.

Even so, if there’s a pricey player in this trade cycle who’s worth considering for Miami, Murray would probably be it.

He’s averaging 20.8 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.8 assists and shooting 38.6 percent on threes. Murray has four years and $114 million left on his deal after this season, including $25.5 million next season.

He played primarily point guard in his five seasons with the Spurs, averaging 9.2 assists in his final season there, but has played more shooting guard alongside Trae Young the past 1 ½ seasons in Atlanta.

A hypothetical deal built around Duncan Robinson, Jovic and a first-round pick would work within cap parameters and leave the Heat well below the 2024-25 tax line and with flexibility to re-sign Martin or Highsmith or both. But there’s no indication if either team would consider that.

Keep this in mind on Murray: While he’s shooting very well on threes this season, he shot 31.7, 32.7 and 34.4 percent on threes the previous three seasons. So any team acquiring him would hope this season’s accuracy is sustainable.

Per ESPN’s Bobby Marks, Murray has a $13.5 million trade bonus in his contract that Atlanta is responsible for paying unless he waives or reduces it. That’s the largest bonus for any player in the league; $3.4 million would be applied to his salary for this season and the next three.

▪ Erik Spoelstra mentioned Herro’s improved defense again after Monday night’s win in Brooklyn, and while NBA.com metrics don’t factor in blow-bys, they do reveal something impressive about Herro’s growth on that end of the court:

Herro is allowing the player he’s guarding to shoot just 43.8 percent, compared to the 46.2 percent that those same players shoot overall.

That 43.8 is the second-lowest field goal percentage allowed by an NBA starting shooting guard this season, behind only Denver Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who’s at 41.7 percent.

As perspective, players defended by Herro last season shot 48.4 percent.

“Tyler’s defense has really improved the past two years,” Spoelstra said. “He understands he has to do it at both ends at a super high level. It can’t just be about scoring.”

▪ In that field-goal-shooting-against measurement, Herro is third best among Heat rotation players, behind Adebayo (41 percent) and Martin (41.2).

Highsmith is fourth among rotation players at 46 percent. Thomas Bryant, mostly out of the rotation, is worst at 56.3.

▪ ESPN analyst JJ Redick, on the Heat, on his “Old Man and The Three” podcast:

“Miami, to me, is sort of the wild card. There are three guys on their team having career years in Bam, Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson.

“Jaime Jaquez has been the third best rookie in the NBA. In terms of efficiency and winning impact, you can argue maybe 2B. He’s been that good.

“The question about Jimmy Butler’s health and availability in the regular season, I think that could determine where they land in the Eastern Conference. That’s my biggest question mark with them. A healthy Miami team in the playoffs, nobody [expletive] wants to see them.”

▪ In commenting on Spoelstra’s contract extension last week, ESPN’s Wojnarowski mentioned Spoelstra’s interest in possibly holding a dual front office and coaching role when Riley, 78, retires.

“A few years ago, [Spoelstra] told me on my podcast that he thought about the idea of someday having the dual role of Pat Riley as president and coach whenever Pat Riley leaves,” Wojnarowski mentioned on ‘NBA Today’ last week.

With the eight-year extension worth well over $100 million, “the Heat are acknowledging what everybody in the league knows: Erik Spoelstra is the best coach in the NBA,” Wojnarowski said. “If you had a draft and made every coach available, he would be the No. 1 overall pick.

“What’s unique about that is it wouldn’t matter if you had a team in a rebuild, if you had a team in the middle and you were trying to get to the playoffs or if you had a championship team because he has shown he can coach all of them.

“They know what kind of players to get him, they know who can play for him. His ability and his staff’s [ability] to develop young players, to take guys who are undrafted, who have been on the scrap heap, cast aside and build them into part of a winning organization, that has so much financial value for an organization that $120 million [for a head coach] is really a bargain.”

▪ Though the Heat has lost some good coaches over the past several years (David Fizdale, Dan Craig, developmental coach Anthony Carter), Spoelstra keeps making good decisions with his staff.

Spoelstra mentioned the other day that Heat assistant coach Malik Allen “is the best big man teaching coach in the league, I feel. He is constantly drilling them on footwork, fundamentals, balance, pivots, up and under, all of that stuff.

“It’s like a Big Man’s camp when Malik has a station. Bam, Thomas [Bryant], Orlando [Robinson] and sometimes Kevin Love will go down there as well. It’s fun to see them feed off each other and talk about different moves each one is good at.

“When K Love jumps in, he just wants to give all his experiences and knowledge to those guys. His footwork is tremendous. People forgot he was a low post guy. It was all about footwork.”