How Miami Heat Guard Max Strus Went From Division II Lewis University To NBA Playoffs Starter

Several people gathered at Scott Trost’s home in suburban Chicago last Friday night to watch the NBA play-in game between the Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls. The game held special meaning for Trost, the head men’s basketball coach at Lewis University, a Division II college with about 4,000 undergraduate students in Romeoville, Ill.

Trost was hosting a recruit that weekend, hoping to convince him to sign with the Flyers. And Trost was eager to watch Max Strus, a former Lewis star and current Heat starter, play against the hometown Bulls, the team that cut him in 2020.

Strus didn’t disappoint. He scored 31 points, including 7-of-12 on 3-pointers, as the Heat won, 102-91, to advance to the playoffs and end the Bulls’ season.

“That was obviously nice to see,” Trost said, chuckling.

Strus’s performance was another reminder to Trost how far he has come and how Strus has exceeded expectations for years now.

These days, Strus is a starter on an NBA playoff team, someone who plays in sold-out arenas, travels on charter flights, stays at the nicest hotels and earns more than $1.8 million. That salary is sure to increase significantly after this season when Strus becomes an unrestricted free agent. But it wasn’t too long ago that he was overlooked player at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in Palos Hills, Ill., about 30 miles southwest of downtown Chicago.

Strus was 5-foot-9 as a sophomore in high school, but he grew to 6-foot-6 by his senior year, when he averaged 19 points and 9 rebounds per game and made third-team All-State. Still, Chicago State was the only Division I college to offer him a scholarship.

Instead of signing with Chicago State, a team that was coming off a 13-19 season and was 284th of 351 Division I teams in analyst Ken Pomeroy’s ratings, Strus decided to head to Lewis. Strus grew up about 20 miles from Lewis, and his older brother, Marty, was a 6-foot-10 center and four-year starter at the school.

Trost and his assistants attended many of Strus’s high school and AAU games, making him a priority recruit.

“We knew he would step in and be an immediate impact player for us,” Trost said. “You don’t see kids at this level do what he does, be 6-6 and shoot it as well as he does. We knew right away that we had a really special player.”

It didn’t take long for Strus to show what he could do. On Nov. 10, 2014, in an exhibition against Division I Illinois State, Strus scored a game-high 30 points on 11-of-16 shooting, including 7-of-11 3-pointers. That season, Strus started all 31 games, averaged 13.3 points per game and was named the Great Lakes Valley Conference Freshman of the Year.

Strus was even better as a sophomore. During the season’s third game, he scored a school-record 52 points on 14-of-18 shooting, making 12-of-14 3’s and all 12 of his free throw attempts as Lewis defeated Northwood in front of 385 fans on the road. Strus led the team with 20.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game and led Lewis to the GLVC tournament title and an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA tournament.

Three days after the season ended, Strus met with Trost in the coach’s office.

“He said he wanted to go Big East, Big Ten or ACC and if he didn’t, he was going to come back,” Trost said.

Trost didn’t hesitate to grant Strus a release from his scholarship. Soon, several Division I colleges that ignored Strus coming out of high school were suddenly interested. Strus ended up signing with DePaul, a Big East school that was near his home and where he had familial ties. Debra Strus, his mother, played basketball and volleyball at DePaul and was inducted into the University’s athletics Hall of Fame in 2000.

“Selfishly, you’d like Max to have stayed, but I totally understood,” Trost said. “He did it the right way. He came in, he talked, kept me abreast of what he was doing. I certainly supported him in what he was trying to do.”

Unlike now, where first-time transfers are granted immediate eligibility, NCAA rules at the time forced Strus to sit out a year. But when he returned for the 2017-18 season, he was just as effective as he had been at Lewis.

During his two years at DePaul, Strus led the team in scoring with 16.8 points per game as a junior and 20.1 points per game as a senior. Still, Strus did not get selected in the 2019 NBA draft.

That July, the Boston Celtics signed Strus to a two-way contract, but they waived him three months later before the regular season began. The Bulls then signed Strus to a two-way deal. Strus played sparingly in two games with the Bulls that November, but he sustained a torn ACL and bone bruise to his left knee in December during a G League game.

As Strus recovered in 2020, a time when the COVID-19 pandemic halted games and in-person workouts, the Bulls cut him. The Heat then signed him to a two-way in December 2020. Strus played in 39 games during that season off the bench, averaging 6.1 points in 13 minutes per game.

Last season, Strus saw more playing time, but he mostly came off the bench before starting the final sox games of the regular season and all 18 playoff games. With the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Philadelphia 76ers tied two games apiece, Strus had 19 points and 10 rebounds in Game 5 and 20 points and 11 rebounds in Game 6 to help clinch the series. The Heat then lost the conference finals to the Boston Celtics in seven games.

This season, Strus again came off the bench most of the season, but he started the final five games of the regular season and both play-in round games. He was also in the starting lineup on Sunday when the No. 8 seed Heat upset the No. 1 seed Milwaukee Bucks, 130-117, in Game 1 of their first round series. Strus finished with 8 points in 38 minutes.

On Wednesday night, the Heat and Bucks play Game 2 in Milwaukee. Trost, Strus’s old coach at Lewis, will be watching, too. He’s not a huge NBA fan and doesn’t have time to see Strus play much during the regular season because the college season is going on, but Trost enjoys the playoffs and especially when Strus is competing.

In his office at Lewis, Trost has a signed Heat jersey from Strus., a famous alum whom Trost uses as an example of someone who just kept working and getting better.

“He was great to coach,” Trost said. “He was an extremely, extremely hard worker and put a lot of time in the gym on his own. He worked really hard to get to where he’s at. He’s very deserving of everything he’s got.”