A: Just about every Heat free-agency permutation involving Dwyane Wade, Hassan Whiteside and "one more player" has essentially excluded Luol. Whether it is a new contract for Deng or his cap hold, it basically would remove the Heat from the free-agency process, if Wade and Whiteside also are retained. You are roughly talking about a $37 million pie to split between three players. Of course, if one of those players isn't Whiteside, then you also could work above the cap and utilize Bird Rights, which would get Wade the larger number he might want (but fewer years), allow for a multi-year contract for Deng and then give the Heat a full mid-level exception. Plus, the Heat then could utilize the various trade exceptions they've been hoarding (although those exceptions cannot be aggregated). To this point, just about every Heat forecast has been about moving forward without Deng. If that thinking changes, then it changes all the thinking about what the Heat's offseason could look like.