The Miami Heat’s Best Bargain Is Hiding in Plain Sight

Start with a number that shouldn’t exist.

Pelle Larsson finished the 2025-26 season with a 60.5% true shooting percentage which is elite efficiency territory, the neighborhood where All-NBA guards live. All of that while shooting just 32.3% from three.

Sit with that combination for a second, because it’s statistically bizarre. True shooting blends threes, twos, and free throws into one efficiency number, and for most guards, the three-ball is the efficiency engine. Post a low-30s three-point percentage and your TS% usually drowns.

Larsson posted one of the least three-dependent elite-efficiency seasons you’ll find from a modern guard which means everything else in his shot diet is carrying enormous weight. With Larsson now extension-eligible on a second-round rookie deal, entering Year 3 as arguably the most underpriced player on the Miami Heat’s roster, it’s a profile worth auditing line by line because how Miami handles this contract will tell you a lot about how they’ve processed their recent cap-table lessons.

Let’s open the hood.

The efficiency paradox

11.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, 3.4 assists in 26.4 minutes across 70 games (54 starts), on 49.6% from the field. As a starter, the numbers scale cleanly: 12.6 points, 3.9 assists on 51.2% shooting across 49 starts avoiding an efficiency decay with the larger role, which is the first thing you check with a young rotation player and the first box Larsson emphatically ticks.

How does a 32% three-point shooter get to 60.5% true shooting?

Rim pressure without the high usage. Larsson’s game is built on downhill force — at 6’5”, 215 pounds, he often plays through contact on cuts, closeout attacks, and in transition. He converts inside the arc and does it almost entirely within the flow of the offense. No wasted dribbles or hero possessions. He provides high-value shots without wasted creation efforts.

The free-throw line. He shot 79.7% from the stripe on meaningful volume with a free-throw rate in the 97th percentile! His rugged style and fondness for contact turns that physicality into free points at an elite rate. Fouls drawn are the most efficient possession in basketball, and Larsson’s whole style is engineered to create those opportunities.

Shot-diet discipline. Almost nothing from the mid-range dead zones. Rim, line, or spot-up three. It’s the shot chart of a player who understands exactly what he is which, at 25, is rarer than the athleticism that it complements.

Databallr advanced metrics — Databallr.com

The development stat that I’m MOST excited about

Here’s the number I’d put on a billboard, because it captures who Larsson is becoming better than any scoring line.

As a rookie, Larsson fouled at 4.8 per 75 possessions which is a hack-happy rate and the classic tax on physical young defenders. In Year 2, he cut it to 2.8 per 75, the sixth-fewest on the team while remaining one of Miami’s best and most physical point-of-attack defenders.

My favorite part was that the fouls going down didn’t mean that he was less aggressive. On the contrary, he applied even more ball pressure, became more precise while cutting two fouls per 75 using better angles on defenders, finding earlier positioning as he drew 38 offensive fouls which was tied for 9th in the NBA.

2025-26 Leaders in Offensive Fouls Drawn...

Generating turnovers in a different way pic.twitter.com/P9eVXGj3nZ
— Basketball University (@UofBasketball) July 8, 2026

Pair him with Davion Mitchell and Miami quietly rosters two legitimate point-of-attack disruptors which matters enormously for reasons I detailed in my breakdown of the Giannis acquisition: this roster’s entire defensive design funnels everything toward Bam Adebayo and Giannis Antetokounmpo as the erasers. The system only works if the front line of the defense turns ball-handlers sideways first. Larsson is going to be a major part of that front line.

The honest hole

Now the flaw, stated plainly: 32.3% from three is not good enough, and no serious evaluation pretends otherwise. But, dig one layer down and the projection gets interesting. Larsson’s catch-and-shoot three which is really the only three he’ll ever need in this system, climbed from 35.8% as a rookie (35th percentile among 277 qualified spot-up shooters) to 37.3% through the first two months of last season (51st percentile).

The trend line points up and what is even more telling is that 79.7% free-throw mark. Free-throw percentage has long been one of the best predictors of three-point development. Analytics researchers have repeatedly found it forecasts pro shooting better than small-sample three-point percentage itself, because it isolates touch from shot difficulty.

And Larsson’s three-point sample is still well short of the ~750 attempts research suggests that number needs to stabilize. In other words: his 79.7% from the line is currently a more reliable read on his touch than his 32.3% from deep. The touch exists and the translation is in progress. It’s already showing up in his catch-and-shoot trend.

The realistic Year 3 target is for Larsson to hit at around 36-37% on catch-and-shoot volume. And on this particular roster, that’s all the job really requires — because as I broke down in my audit of Miami’s shooting corps (THREAD):

Last season, 91 players leaguewide hit the average (36%) or better on 100+ threes.

This season, the Heat will roster at least 4 of them.

Although they’d like more shooting, (who doesn’t), this team is stacked with it — and they will add more 👇🏽
— Coach Geo (@coachgeo_) July 4, 2026

The Heat already surround their stars with seven league-average-or-better shooters. Larsson doesn’t need to be THE spacing. He just can’t be bad enough where he’s unplayable. He’s one small leap from that bar, and every leading indicator says the leap is coming.

Why the Giannis (and maybe LeBron) era helps him

Here’s the analytical question that actually decides Larsson’s future value: does his game scale down in usage without scaling down in impact? Last season’s Heat needed Larsson to start 54 games and create in stretches. The new Heat, built around Giannis, Bam, and potentially another elite playmaker if the scenario I explored in my LeBron piece materializes — will need him to do less with the ball and more without it.

Every efficiency input above is usage-independent: his cutting, closeout attacks, transition finishing, spot-up shooting, foul-drawing, and point-of-attack defense all get easier next to gravity. A Giannis drive that drags three defenders creates exactly the closeout Larsson attacks best with his ghost cutting and spot ups. Low-usage roles expose players who need the ball to matter but they reward glue guys like Larsson, whose value was never denominated in touches.

Every contender needs two or three players like Larsson. Almost nobody values them correctly until it’s too late. Which brings us to the money….

The extension math

Larsson is entering Year 3 of a second-round rookie deal while producing like a $12-16 million role player by any per-dollar impact framework you choose. Per-minute production, positional scarcity (physical two-way connector guards are among the most expensive archetypes on the open market), age curve (25, pre-prime), and the developmental slope all point one direction. On pure value-per-dollar, he might be the best contract on the roster.

Given what Miami is now paying its stars, cheap productive minutes are a luxury and should be the whole roster-building model.

So why hasn’t the extension happened? Here’s where I’ll give the front office its due, because the hesitation is rational even when the player is definitely worth it. Miami has recent scar tissue on this exact decision where they paid a promising young rotation player early, on projection, and watched the contract age badly enough, so far, to become a trade-machine fixture.

Jan 20, 2026; Sacramento, California, USA; Miami Heat guard Pelle Larsson (9) is fouled by Sacramento Kings guard DeMar DeRozan (10) during the second quarter at Golden 1 Center. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The Nikola Jović extension is up until now, that cautionary tale. The lesson is that the timing of certainty has value. Waiting costs Miami some negotiating leverage if Larsson’s three-ball arrives and his price jumps; extending now costs them flexibility if it doesn’t. Given the aprons, the star payroll, and the Jović experience, buying one more year of information is a defensible trade as long as they understand the risk on the other side.

Players like Pelle who prove it on winning teams get paid by someone, and the market for this archetype only moves up. My read on it is that a team-friendly extension in the $12-16 million-per-year range serves both sides before the three-point leap makes that number look quaint. But if Miami waits, it should wait with eyes open.

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