Heat trade two-time All-Star to Thunder

The Heat are offloading reserve shooting guard Victor Oladipo to the Thunder, sources inform Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN tweets that Miami will send Oklahoma City draft compensation along with the veteran wing.

The Heat, meanwhile, will net a $9.45M trade exception by flipping his salary. Miami also still has a $4.7M trade exception from its February deal of big man Dewayne Dedmon.

Earlier this week, the injury-plagued former All-Star picked up his player option for the 2023-24 season. Oladipo tore his left knee patellar tendon during Miami’s first-round matchup against the Bucks.

As Bobby Marks of ESPN details (via Twitter), the Thunder will absorb Oladipo’s salary into its available cap space. After the deal, Oklahoma City should still have an estimated $7.2M in available money at its disposal, as well as the $7.8M room exception. The club currently has 16 players under contract and will need to make more moves to reduce its headcount to 15 for its standard roster this fall.

With 11 players currently signed, meanwhile, the Heat now have $172M in committed salary. While Miami is in the luxury tax, this move shifts the team $6.5M beneath the highly punitive second tax apron. As Yossi Gozlan of HoopsHype (Twitter link) notes, the team is in a better position to use its $5M taxpayer mid-level exception but still may have to shed a little salary to do so.

Should the 31-year-old Oladipo remain with the Thunder, it would represent his second tour of duty with the team. After being drafted by the Magic with the second overall pick out of Indiana in 2013, he spent three seasons with Orlando before being dealt to Oklahoma City in 2016. The Thunder flipped him to the Pacers as part of the Paul George trade the following summer. With the Pacers, Oladipo blossomed into a two-time All-Star thanks to a versatile scoring touch and stellar perimeter defense.

His major lower body injury issues first began to plague him in Indiana, and he has since been trying to find his footing as a defense-first role player with the Rockets and Heat. During his 42 healthy regular season contests with Miami in 2022-23, the 6-foot-4 vet averaged 10.7 PPG, 3.5 APG, 3.0 RPG and 1.4 SPG in 26.3 MPG, mostly off the Heat bench.