Wilfredo Lee/AP PhotoMiami ? Much like wine, Pat Riley wanted a player who got better with age.
The Miami Heat president was in Paris last week with his wife, celebrating their 35th anniversary.
Yet he couldn’t leave work behind; in their hotel room one night, Riley enjoyed a glass of 1953 Chateau Margeaux while reviewing draft reports.
“I kept coming back to a name, and I kept coming back to statistics,” Riley said. “And I kept coming back to a player by the name of Wayne Simien that we had talked about all year.”
And just as the Heat hoped, the first-team All-American and Big 12 Conference player of the year from Kansas University was still there at No. 29 – where Miami took the 6-foot-9, 255-pound power forward Tuesday night.
The Heat’s draft plan was to get someone who could contribute right away to a title-contending team, not someone who needs some time to mature.
Simien believes he’ll be exactly what Miami wanted.
“With my four-year tenure at the University of Kansas … playing against top-quality college competition night in and night out, I feel that’s definitely prepared me to step up in any type of role,” Simien said.
Flanked by agent Leigh Steinberg, Simien arrived Wednesday in Miami to start a getting-to-know-you session with the Heat. He’s expected to leave next week for Southern California and the Heat’s summer-league team.
Heat general manager Randy Pfund expects Simien to quickly vie for a spot in the team’s playing rotation. Simien also gives the team needed frontcourt depth to help Shaquille O’Neal; starting power forward Udonis Haslem is a restricted free agent who could be lured elsewhere by more money.
“I really haven’t had a chance to play with a true center before, especially one at a high-caliber like Shaquille. … I’ll be able to definitely complement him,” Simien said.
Simien’s college resume sparkles: As a senior, he led the Big 12 in scoring (20.3) and rebounding (11.0) and was a finalist for the Wooden and Naismith awards. Still, he nearly slipped out of the first round and was the ninth power forward drafted.
But he was hardly upset to land in Miami.
“You’ve got Shaq and Dwyane Wade and a chance to go for a championship. … We were sort of body-englishing to get down there,” Steinberg said. “The perspective that we had with Wayne was, ‘Do you want an hour of real great time on draft night, going five picks higher, or do you want like 10 awesome years of being in a quality experience?”‘
Kansas played Wade’s Marquette club in the 2003 Final Four, but Simien did not dress for the Jayhawks’ 94-61 victory in the national semifinals. He missed 22 games that season with a dislocated right shoulder and was also bothered by thumb, knee and groin problems at times during his college career.
Simien hopes to quiet any notions that he’s injury-prone – although health problems are nothing new for the native of Leavenworth.
Not only has he undergone surgeries on his shoulder – which has been problematic since high school – and thumb, but he snapped a tendon in his left knee as an eighth-grader, then needed an operation a couple of years later to correct a heart-valve problem.
“I think my injuries are behind me,” Simien said.
Simien averaged 15.0 points and 8.3 rebounds per game on 55.8 percent shooting in his college career; take away his freshman season, when he played about 15 minutes per game as a reserve, and his collegiate averages rise to 18.0 points and 9.7 rebounds. He left as Kansas’ 12th all-time leading scorer (1,593).
South Florida will be a bit of a culture shock for Simien. He joked Wednesday about the cow-to-human ratio in Kansas and how certain cities – like New York – are intimidating to a guy from a town of 35,000 people who went to college 40 miles from his parents’ home.
“I’m kind of used to small-town life, being comfortable in that regard,” Simien said. “But it’s definitely time for a change, and I have to go to work now.”
Notes: The Heat picked up the team option on forward Qyntel Woods for next season. He’s averaged 3.1 points and 1.7 rebounds in limited duty during his first three NBA seasons, and played in three games with the Heat this past year. … Forward Juan Mendez, who led Niagara of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference to the NCAA Tournament this year, is leaning toward accepting Miami’s offer to play on its summer league team. Mendez scored 2,210 points at Niagara, second in school history behind Calvin Murphy.
