Dewayne Dedmon hopes to return to the Heat next season. A look at the factors at play

Dewayne Dedmon was a free agent just three months ago before he reached an agreement to sign with the Miami Heat as a late-season addition in April.

As the veteran center prepares to again enter free agency this summer, he hopes to find a way back to continue his Heat tenure.

“I definitely hope to be back next year,” Dedmon said at the end of this past season in late May. “But that’s up to the people upstairs. So we’ll see what happens.”

Considering the quality minutes that Dedmon provided off the bench in his short time with the team this past season, the feeling is likely mutual between the Heat and Dedmon if the price is right.

Dedmon took over as the Heat’s backup center shortly after he signed and provided a much-needed interior presence when starting center Bam Adebeyo went to the bench. Those minutes had been a negative before the addition of Dedmon, but the Heat outscored opponents by 17.1 points per 100 possessions with Dedmon on the court in the regular season.

Dedmon, who turns 32 on Aug. 12, averaged 7.1 points on 70.8 percent shooting and 5.4 rebounds in 16 regular-season games in a bench role. It marked his first NBA game action since March 11, 2020, as he had been out of the league this season until the Heat signed him on April 8.

Per 36 minutes, Dedmon averaged 19.3 points, 14.7 rebounds, 1.5 steals and one block this past season.

“I definitely feel like that would help a lot,” Dedmon said when asked how much a full offseason and preseason in the Heat’s system would benefit him. “There are still plays that I don’t really know, you know what I’m saying. So just to be able to have a full summer working with the team or preseason working with the team or whatever it may be would do numbers.”

Dedmon grabbed offensive rebounds at an elite rate, as he collected 28 offensive boards in 16 regular-season games. He posted an offensive rebounding percentage of 13.7 percent (the percentage of available offensive rebounds a player grabs when he’s on the court).

For perspective, the league’s top offensive rebounder Boban Marjanovic of the Dallas Mavericks finished the regular season with an offensive rebounding percentage of 15.9 percent.

“Everything is pretty much set in stone,” Dedmon said of his Heat experience. “When I got here, I knew they played hard and I knew everybody worked hard. So when I came here, it was kind of easy just to adjust to that because that’s how I play. Just go hard, play hard. That’s what I tried to do.”

But there will be at least one challenge in re-signing Dedmon: The Heat does not have Dedmon’s Bird rights since he was signed as a free agent, so it would need to use cap space or an exception to retain him.

If the Heat operates as an over-the-cap team this offseason, it would have all or part of a $9.5 million midlevel exception, all or part of a $3.6 million biannual exception, or a minimum contract to offer Dedmon.

If the Heat operates as a room team this offseason, it would have cap space, all or part of a $4.9 million midlevel exception or a minimum contract to offer Dedmon.

But what would bringing back Dedmon mean for center Precious Achiuwa entering his second season? Achiuwa spent the first three months of his rookie season as the Heat’s backup center, but he fell out of the rotation after the team added Dedmon in April.

“I like Precious’ game. He’s aggressive,” Dedmon said. “Even in games that he played toward the end of the season this year, he was aggressive at the rim. ... I feel like he has some good potential in this league.”

Another factor looming over the Heat-Dedmon situation this offseason: Is it sustainable to play Adebayo and Dedmon together to maximize Dedmon’s court time? Spoelstra does not usually like to play two centers together who both score most of their points in the paint because of spacing concerns.

Dedmon averaged just 13.2 minutes per game with the Heat in the regular season because he was limited to non-Adebayo minutes. Adebayo and Dedmon played less than a minute together in the regular season before logging eight minutes together in Game 2 of the Heat’s first-round playoff series against the Milwaukee Bucks.

Dedmon isn’t a total non-shooter, though, and has the potential to play as a floor-spacer to help make a pairing with Adebayo work. Dedmon has made 156 threes in his NBA career in the regular season, and he’s a career 33.1 percent three-point shooter.

“I definitely feel like there’s room for us to play together, but it takes chemistry and time,” Dedmon said. “I feel like once we build that up and figure out where we both should be when we’re on the court together, that’s something that we can definitely look out for in the future.”