Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra named his longtime forward Justise Winslow as the team's new starting point guard in the wake of a league-best five-game win streak to put the team back at the .500 mark.
“[Justise Winslow] is our starting point guard,” said Spoelstra on Wednesday morning, according to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press. “It's a big responsibility. He loves those kinds of challenges.”
Winslow has racked up five assists in each of the last two games he's played in, thrusted into the playmaking duties in light of the absence of Goran Dragic, who will be out a while due to knee surgery.
Spoelstra had experimented with the 6-foot-7 youngster running the offense and gotten mixed results with it, but he's found some cohesion as of late, which has resulted in this recent winning streak that has the Heat back at 16-16, now sneaking into the seventh seed of the Eastern Conference playoff picture.
The Heat have proven much better on the road, sporting a 9-7 record, adverse to their 7-9 tally at home — sporting a 7-3 mark in their last 10 games, despite a plethora of injuries sustained through the early part of the season.
Miami has a backlog of shooting guards in the roster, including Josh Richardson, Tyler Johnson, Dwyane Wade, Rodney McGruder, Wayne Ellington and the injured Dion Waiters. A lot of these players have been forced to play out of position and create outside of their abilities — something that is also true for Winslow, who will be experimenting this venture full-time for the near future.
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