The Miami Heat were thrilled back in June when former Duke Blue Devil Justise Winslow fell to them at the number ten overall pick in the draft as they saw him as one of the most talented players in the draft. Winslow has played a much bigger role than expected as a rookie but he has been as good as advertised despite not putting up big numbers. Most of the talk about Winslow has been about his defensive acumen but what has gone under the radar is his versatility and the Heat plan to showcase that more by giving him more minutes at the power forward spot, according to Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
It was expected coming into the season that Winslow would have a minor role for the Heat because of how deep their team is but head coach Erik Spoelstra loves his defensive ability so he is playing 27.1 minutes per game. Winslow's numbers will not jump out at you but the advanced defensive stats say that he is already an elite defender.
Winslow is 6-foot-7 which is the typical size for a small forward and that is his natural position. Right now though, Miami is thin in the frontcourt so Spoelstra recently used Winslow at the four spot and says that might happen more often now.
"There's a lot of time being spent behind the scenes, he's been doing that. For about over a month, he's been working a lot of his reps at the four pre-practice. He doesn't play it a lot in the game, but you never know when. And it's not like it's something new. So he's had a thousand reps behind the scenes. He gets thrown in there, it's like, 'OK, I got this. This is familiar," said Spoelstra.
Winslow did play some power forward last season at Duke and nowadays in the NBA having a 6-foot-7 power forward won't hurt, just look at Draymond Green. The Heat came into this season expecting to be at least two deep at every position but both Chris Andersen and Amare Stoudemire have been out of the rotation and Josh McRoberts has missed a lot of time due to injury so it has left them thin in the frontcourt.
Winslow isn't a stretch four at this point in his career as he is making just 23 percent of his threes but he is able to defend other power forwards and that is the main reason why Spoelstra is comfortable playing him there. As Spoelstra said it doesn't happen often but it is certainly a great luxury to have the ability to play Winslow at a variety of different positions at any given time.
