P.J. Tucker is getting an MRI on his knee. If he's unable to return to the series, how much does that affect the Heat?
He's a 70-game starter who gives the Heat defense and shooting, along with around 8 points and 6 rebounds. At age 37, he's arguably having the best season of his career.
Does that mean Dedmon gets the starting role? Or do the Heat try to go even smaller?
(This is all speculative.)
MIA has very limited depth at PF and C. Tucker has been playing 30 min per game in the playoffs. Dedmon 10 minutes. I think that is a big drop off going from Tucker to Dedmon. And even if you bump Dedmon from 10 to 20 minutes, you still have another 20 minutes that you need to replace. Due to their limited ability to replace Tucker with another big, I think this would be an impactful loss if it turns out to be true.
So I think what would happen is that MIA would get what they could out of Dedmon (again, maybe 20 minutes) but the balance of the minutes they probably would go with more of a small line up perhaps with Duncan Robinson playing many of those minutes and Jimmy Butler playing more of the Swing/PF role. Butler is plenty good/strong enough to do that but Miami would end up with their best player playing out of position. At 6'-7", Butler is actually longer than Tucker. But with Dedmon playing more and Robinson playing more, that puts some lesser players on the court more than I am sure Miami would like.
I am not sure what happened with Duncan Robinson. He started 68 games in the regular season. Averaged 26 minutes. His 3p% was down from prior years but still decent at 37%. Probably the big issue is that he can't play the type of defense that Tucker can. Tatum or Brown would likely torch Robinson. But why has he gone for a mostly starter for the entire regular season to hardly playing in the playoffs? Their top minutes line up in the regular season was Lowry, Robinson, Butler, Tucker, Adebayo. Why play (and play well) all season with one line up but then change it for the playoffs?