The Miami Heat have been making a lot of moves in the past couple of days to try and lower their tax bill. On Sunday they traded Shabazz Napier, on Monday they traded Zoran Dragic, and now they have reportedly made a couple of other moves. Among those moves is reportedly modifying the contract of James Ennis according to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinal.
Ennis initially had a clause in his contract, like a lot of players do, that guaranteed the rest of his money on August 1st but this modification will reportedly move that deadline back to the day before the season starts. This move is mutually beneficial because the Heat now have all of training camp to decide if they want to pay Ennis and keep him on the team, and it gives Ennis time to prove he belongs.
The Heat were very high on Ennis coming out of the draft and he showed some flashes of his athleticism and his potential in his rookie season with the Heat, but now Miami might have a bit of a roster crunch. Even after the recent trades it might be hard to fit Ennis onto the roster, unless he really shows something in training camp, because the Heat are likely going to hang on to Tyler Johnson and Josh Richardson, the latter of whom they are extremely high on.
Ennis' shooting numbers in his first season with the Heat weren't great at only 41 percent from the field and 33 percent from three, and they plummeted in the summer league. Ennis made just 31 percent of his field goals during this years summer league and 11 percent of his three point attempts prompting him to say that he feels like he hasn't gotten any better since last summer.
Even if Ennis does turn it around and have a great training camp it is very possible that he will draw the short straw in Miami and be part of a numbers crunch. Ennis admitted earlier in the offseason he was nervous about his spot and he still should be. The move to modify his contract gives Ennis more of a chance to earn his way onto Miami's roster but his chances still don't seem to be too great.
