Ira Winderman: The Heat, Duncan Robinson and the art of the draft stash

The lesson ahead of the Nov. 18 NBA draft is not as much about investigating who the Miami Heat have brought in for workouts or set up for interviews, but rather who the team has stashed out of view.

Says who? Says Chet Kammerer, the team’s draft guru emeritus, who, at this very moment, well may have, for all we know, the Heat’s next developmental project squirreled up at a Motel 6 in Dania Beach.

In reflecting on Duncan Robinson’s rise from undrafted 2018 prospect to Heat rotation revelation, Kammerer explained to the Sun Sentinel the painstaking detail the team went through to emerge with the forward from Michigan in the minutes after that draft.

“We purposely didn’t bring him in,” Kammerer acknowledged of the team’s subterfuge, with the Heat without a 2018 second-round pick, as again is the case in this year’s draft.

Typically, if a team desires to get a look at a prospect, it lobbies the league to have such a player invited either to the smaller Portsmouth (Va.) Invitational for college seniors, or the larger Chicago combine.

Robinson was part of neither.

“He didn’t get invited to Portsmouth. He didn’t go to Chicago,” Kammerer said. “He had very few workouts.”

Instead, early on during the process, Kammerer became convinced of the possibility of something special. Not necessarily guaranteed, he clarified, but intriguing enough to revisit.

“I saw him work out early,” Kammerer said. “I saw him, I said, ‘Guys, I’m telling you, if this guy is on the board (after the draft), he needs to be on our summer-league team.’ ”

Typically, teams without second-round picks buy their way into such selections, rather than allow a mostly disinterested party to take a flier.

That is another part of the Robinson story that tends to be overstated. The Heat and Kammerer were in like with Robinson. But in love?

Not enough, Kammerer said, to go into the pockets of owner Micky Arison. Recall, the 2018 offseason came after huge Heat outlays to Hassan Whiteside and Tyler Johnson in 2016 free agency, and then money gone bad to Dion Waiters and James Johnson in 2017 free agency.

“At the time,” Kammerer said, “I wasn’t thinking, ‘Well, I’m going to ask our owner for $2 million to get the pick to get him.’ ”

So Kammerer instead made sure he never used the words “Duncan” and “Robinson” in the same draft-analysis sentence leading up to that draft (or at least made it sound that way).

“Because I thought he was totally under the radar,” Kammerer said.

All the while, Kammerer was selling Robinson’s representation on the Heat’s developmental program, a program that helped shape Robinson into one of the game’s most feared shooters, with a dedicated place on opposing scouting reports during the Heat’s run to this season’s NBA Finals.

“In the meantime,” Kammerer said, “I was in contact with his agent. We had already told him, ‘If he doesn’t get drafted, we want him.’ ”

For all Kammerer has achieved with the Heat in the draft, there is a humility that endures, even now in his role as senior adviser of basketball operations.

So, no, in a 2018 draft when the Heat also lacked a first-round pick, he didn’t push for a pick.

Instead, as could again be the case on Nov. 18, he waited through all 60 selections, his speed dial set for what he viewed as a low-risk, high-reward possibility.

And then came the midnight hours.

“It wasn’t like I told these guys he was a first-round pick,” Kammerer said. “I thought he could make our roster, but I had no idea he’d be our starter in two years.”

To a degree, that leads to somewhat of the shame of this year’s process, one created by pandemic scheduling.

If there again is such a prospect for Kammerer and the Heat, it this time would arrive without the advantage of an ensuing summer league, or even extensive time on the Heat practice court. Instead, it could be directly on to training camp, a transition that well might have been a bit much even for Robinson in 2018.

“We know he was good,” Kammerer said. “We didn’t know this good.”

But, more importantly, they made sure no one else knew.

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