This Just Might Be Miami's Next Undrafted Steal

The clip went around South Florida last week before most people knew whose handle they were watching. Tre Donaldson, an undrafted rookie who is on a two-way contract, was putting his defender on skates in the Heat's Red, White and Pink scrimmage on his way to 25 points. If you only saw the crossover you would assume you were watching a veteran guard, somebody who had been doing nothing but this since he was nine years old. That’s just it though, he wasn't.

Five years ago, the most valuable thing about Tre Donaldson was his arm.

At Florida State University School in Tallahassee, he played quarterback and defensive back, and he was good enough at football that 247Sports made him a four-star recruit. He was considered the 23rd-best safety in the country and the 32nd-best prospect in the state of Florida. As a junior in 2020 he completed 68 percent of his passes for 1,765 yards and 15 touchdowns.

He was also the Florida Dairy Farmers Player of the Year in basketball and won a Class 3A state title, so when he committed to Auburn in August of 2021 he committed to playing both sports. Ultimately, he went on to play for Head Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl and left the football part of himself on the field in Tallahassee. I keep coming back to that, because the thing that makes him an NBA prospect right now is the thing he learned as a quarterback.

Watch him run a pick and roll and you are watching somebody read coverage. He is not surveying the floor so much as diagnosing it, waiting on the second defender to commit, then delivering the ball on time. Quarterbacks learn to throw to where a guy is going to be instead of where he is.

Point guards who can do the same thing are rare, and the ones who learned it somewhere other than basketball tend to see passing angles that everybody else gets to just a half-second late. He finished his college career with a 2.7 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is a strong indicator of high-level ball security, decision-making, and court vision.

Before arriving in the University of Miami, he had a slow start to his collegiate career. As a freshman at Auburn he averaged 2.5 points in 32 games. As a sophomore he got to 6.7 points and 3.2 assists with ten starts. Then he transferred to Michigan in April of 2024, started all 37 games at point guard, averaged 11.3 points, 4.1 assists and 3.5 rebounds, and won a Big Ten tournament title. He also beat Maryland on a layup at the buzzer.

Last season in Miami, his fourth year of college basketball and his third school, he became the best version of himself. He averaged 16.4 points, 5.7 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 1.4 steals across 35 games while shooting 45.4 percent from the field, 35.9 from three and 76.6 from the line. He was second-team All-ACC and ACC Player of the Week in January, and against Georgia Tech he put up 27 points and 10 assists, making him the first Miami player to go for 20 and 10 in a game since Isaiah Wong in 2022.

He had five games with double-digit assists. Despite all the accolades, he went undrafted anyway. Every pick of the 2026 draft came and went, and on June 24 he signed a one-year two-way deal with the Miami Heat.

He is listed at 6-2, and in the modern NBA it is difficult to carve out a niche as a guard that doesn’t have an elite skill like shooting for example. His three-point percentage has gone the wrong direction at every single stop. He hit 40.6 percent as an Auburn freshman, 41.2 as a sophomore, 37.5 at Michigan, and 35.9 last year at Miami.

You can explain that curve simply by mentioning that his volume and responsibility went up, he was taking harder shots later in the clock with a defense keyed on him instead of standing in a corner waiting. But the explanation is still a trend, and the trend points down. That is a main reason why he wasn't drafted.

One of the reasons that make me want to bet on him anyway is that he won’t be asked to lead an offense and manufacture points. A guard whose three-point percentage is falling while his free throw percentage is holding is usually a shot-selection problem rather than a mechanics issue, and shot selection is the easiest thing on that list to fix when you take the ball out of his hands and let somebody else like Giannis Antetokounmpo break the defense first.

This is a team that now runs everything downhill through a two-time MVP. The reserve guard here is not asked to manufacture offense out of nothing. He is asked to defend at the point of attack, make the right read when the defense collapses, and knock down the shots that he gets. Donaldson is physical enough to do the first part. He plays low, he uses his frame, and he keeps a ball handler on his hip instead of reaching.

Dru Smith strained his right calf during training camp, and Smith was the projected backup behind Mitchell. Fellow rookie and second-round draft selection Ryan Conwell figures to be the next in line while Dru Smith recovers, but it has also afforded Tre an opportunity to show what he is capable of. Donaldson scored 12 points on 62.5 percent shooting with two assists in 15 second-half minutes against New Orleans, then started the Minnesota game outright alongside Pelle Larsson, Simone Fontecchio, Nikola Jović and Nick Richards.

His two-way contract allows him up to have his moments over 50 regular-season games, which can drag with injuries and fatigue over a long 82-games .

The undrafted-Heat-gem story has been told so many times in Miami that it has now become the norm. Udonis Haslem. Duncan Robinson. Kendrick Nunn. Gabe Vincent. Max Strus. Caleb Martin. For every one of those names there are a dozen two-way guards who spent a season in Sioux Falls and then went to Europe. Most of them just don't stick.

But the ones who do stay around almost always share one thing, which is that they arrive already knowing how to do something specific at an NBA level while the rest of their game catches up. Robinson could shoot before he could do anything else. Vincent could guard. Donaldson can already create for others with his passing, and passing is a skill that an offense centered around driving and kicking can convert into points faster than any other.

He spent his childhood learning to stand in the pocket and find the open man with somebody closing in on him. I'd argue that's still his job. The field just got a little smaller.