Tyler Herro wanted to be Heat’s No. 1 option. Now he’s learning how hard it is

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MIAMI — Trapped in the corner with nowhere to go, Tyler Herro was where he had asked to be.

It started in the bubble five years ago, when the rookie returned from quarantine with a swagger that put the league on notice. He still wanted all the smoke when teams passed on trading for him over the past few years and fans questioned if he could ever be more than an oft-injured bench scorer. Jimmy Butler came to him before the season and told Herro his time was coming.

Herro’s time came as the Butler saga unfolded and the franchise felt like it was unraveling. With Butler suspended multiple times, there was no doubt the Heat’s offense was now Herro’s to run. But ascending to that role in the middle of a power struggle between personalities as combustible as Butler and Pat Riley was not how Herro envisioned things.

Herro and the Heat eventually figured it out, making it through the Play-In Tournament to face the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round. They even showed signs of life in a close Game 2 loss in Cleveland. But Miami’s light dimmed Saturday as the Cavs successfully disconnected Herro from the offense he is tasked with orchestrating.

The Heat’s All-Star guard spent much of the 124-87 Game 3 loss — the most lopsided playoff defeat in franchise history — swimming through a sea of bodies, unable to find the ball as Miami fell into a 3-0 series hole.

Now Herro faces a distinct crossroads, wanting to prove he can lead a team in the postseason while reflecting on what could have been if Butler never forced his way out.

“Obviously, I know I need Jimmy to win. If we had Jimmy right now, I feel like it’d be a completely different situation,” Herro told The Athletic before Game 3. “We probably wouldn’t even be the eighth seed. So finding that middle balance of like, damn, we need him, but also understanding, sh–, that’s his career and what he wants is ultimately his right to want what he wants. It was just tough to be in the middle of both sides.”

Herro entered the season assuming a locker room leadership role alongside Bam Adebayo. He reflected on the lessons he learned from Butler over the course of his career, trying to replicate a leadership paradigm that kept the Heat competitive with Butler at the helm.

“I’ve known Jimmy for five, six years, obviously being with him every day, just seeing how he is as a basketball player and how he really makes his teammates better,” Herro said. “He makes the right play all the time, just seeing that competitive edge that he brought.”

Amid the turmoil, Herro made his first All-Star team, averaging career-highs of 23.9 points and 5.5 assists per game as Miami clung to playoff hopes. Miami ran the gauntlet once Butler was finally excommunicated from Heat Culture, going on a 10-game losing streak, then playing well enough in the final month of the season to take down the Bulls and Hawks in the Play-In Tournament.

Finally, the real test came. In Miami, the standard is playoff excellence. The regular season is a tinkering session for coach Erik Spoelstra to sift through the DNA of his team and the rest of the league. The playoffs is where the real Heat is supposed to emerge. That was Butler’s special power, as he always transformed himself and the team. Herro must strive to uphold that ideal, even if his game isn’t designed to do it in quite the same way.

Heading into Saturday, things were looking promising. Spoelstra and Herro figured out the Cavs defense in the fourth quarter of Game 2. They knew their way around the walls Cleveland was putting between Herro and his playmaking partners — Adebayo and newcomer Davion Mitchell. Miami is at its best when Herro is flying around off the ball, poking at the defense’s weak spots until something breaks open for him or his teammates.

But from the beginning of Game 3, that wall was back and sturdier than ever. Whether it was Herro’s former teammate Max Strus top-locking him inside the 3-point arc or Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley stifling all the other actions to get the ball toward Herro, Cleveland caused the Heat offense to completely collapse and erased their hopes of making this a series along with it.

Spoelstra blamed himself in his postgame news conference, saying he needed to better position Adebayo and Herro tactically. But when asked if he needs to hold Herro accountable for not finding a way to make things work, Spoelstra defended his No. 1 option.

“C’mon, he just had a monster game and they just said, ‘We’re going to do whatever we have to do to make sure that he doesn’t have that.’ That’s born out of respect,” Spoelstra said. “We’ll all get to work and that’s what Tyler always does. But this is playoff basketball. All the really good players have to go through this. You get schemed and the schemes are on steroids in the playoffs.”

The Cavaliers defense increased its ball pressure on Adebayo to prevent him from finding cutters underneath. That worked in tandem with denying Herro, keeping him away from the Adebayo handoffs that have become Herro’s calling card the past few seasons.

Herro should be better prepared for this moment. Last season, the Heat lost Butler before their first-round series against the Celtics, and Herro showed flashes of the game he exhibited throughout this season. The Boston series was a turning point for Herro, as he finally got a chance to be the offensive engine. Having the likes of Boston’s Jrue Holiday, Jaylen Brown and Derrick White take turns guarding him was a test that would force any emerging star to sink or swim.

“It gave me an outline of what works and what doesn’t work against some of the better defenders,” Herro said. “And how I can transform my game and take the good parts of my game and just continue to make it better.”

While Herro still has a ways to go to perform at the level he and the Heat want in the postseason, he is more than willing to face the criticism. He embraces it. Whether it was Heat President Pat Riley calling him fragile for only playing 40 games last season or Darius Garland saying the Cavs’ gameplan was to drive right at him, Herro is used to having people calling him out.

“I love it. That’s how I grew up. So that’s my natural habitat, fiery, just talking sh– and understanding that it’s basketball,” Herro said. “Just talking sh– about basketball bro. It’s not the end of the world.”

Herro said Riley’s criticism pushed him to work more on his body this past offseason than ever before. He understood Riley is old school and will say it to his face and to the world. “I could call myself fragile as well and not be in my feelings,” Herro said.

Adebayo said he has always had respect for Herro, but the resilience the guard showed through all the noise the past year solidified it. So with Herro limited to just 13 points in Game 3, Adebayo wasn’t concerned about the All-Star folding with the team’s backs against the wall.

“I’ve seen Tyler go through worse,” Adebayo said. “The media has drug that man through the mud a lot. … We’re going to figure it out. Be vocal, eye-to-eye communication and see what happens Monday.”

Miami’s season will end sooner or … well, it will be soon. There is no evidence this will be the first 3-0 comeback in NBA history. Just extending the series would be impressive at this point. Herro has possibly one more game to show that he can beat the Cavaliers’ gameplan, that he has what it takes to still control a playoff game even when the opponent’s top priority is to prevent that.

“All the really good players have to go through this,” Spoelstra said. “You get schemed and the schemes are on steroids in the playoffs.”

The All-Star guard entered this series knowing the goal was to compete and make sure everyone enjoyed the journey. That’s been the task at hand since that first conversation with Butler in the offseason, a forewarning that this team was entering a transitional phase.

Herro sees the beauty in this downturn. He’s following Butler in a lineage of Heat scorers who rose and fell, some more gracefully than others.

“Hell yeah, that’s how it works,” Herro said. “That’s part of the game. That’s life.”

(Top photo: Jared Weiss/The Athletic)

This news was originally published on this post .

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