The NBA trading deadline, which comes Thursday at 3 p.m., is a time when teams not only have to take stock in the moment, but also in their futures.

Sometimes balancing those is not so simple.

The Miami Heat know that as well as any team, learning at the 2015 deadline that forward Chris Bosh would be away from the team due to potentially life-threatening blood clots.

Then, just before the 2016 deadline, there was yet another such episode with Bosh, sidelining him for the balance of that season, as it did the season before.

Now the Heat arrive at the deadline again with a significant unknown, one not nearly as weighty in the greater scheme as the Bosh situation, but one that casts uncertainty whether this coming week could or should be a time to act.

Simply: What is Dion Waiters' future with the Miami Heat? Not in terms of location, but of role.

There is no question there will be a Heat future, if only because it's not as if another team is taking on the remainder of the four-year, $52 million free-agent deal signed in July, now with Waiters out for the balance of this season following Jan. 23 ankle surgery.

But how does he fit in going forward?

As the go-to scorer he was during the best of last season's 30-11 second-half surge?

As the secondary ballhandler who stepped into that role at the start of this season when Goran Dragic took a breather?

As Dwyane Wade Lite, at 26 still young enough to evolve into the team's star shooting guard of the future?

When the Heat released their 99-word statement following's Waiters' surgery, there was nothing about a complete recovery being expected, rather the simple terming of the procedure, handled by Waiters' choice of outside medical staff, as "successful."

What the Heat think of Waiters' future impacts so many elements of the roster's composition.

You don't trade a significant asset for a go-to scorer if you believe you already have one. But you might thin out your perimeter rotation, perhaps try to offload Tyler Johnson's skyrocketing salary, even if it means adding a sweetener.

If you believe Waiters' future can be as a de facto backup point guard, perhaps even as a successor to Dragic, then you look at the position differently when it comes to taking on any contract of consequence at the position.

And if the final two-plus months of last season, plus the optimistic surgical report, create ultimate hope of a potential franchise player, then you could potentially sit out most of the upcoming personnel deadlines, viewing Waiters as next man up to Dragic's All-Star ascension.

So it is about this and only this: Who is Dion Waiters, this Dion Waiters, the one coming off ankle surgery?

The Heat went all in last summer on a player coming off a significant ankle injury, an ankle injury that ultimately may have cost them a playoff berth.

Now they're getting a player who supposedly no longer will have to worry about or be limited by that ankle. New and improved. Even better?

But can all the struggles at the start of this season, before the latest ankle tweak on Dec. 22, be attributed solely to the surgical ankle? Or did the Heat make a July error in judgment?

Those happen. But unlike with Waiters' transcendent optimism, it doesn't mean you have to double down on the investment with an assumption that everything will fall back into place.

Do the Heat believe they have their shooting guard of the future?

They just might let us know by how they approach Thursday at 3 p.m.