Why last season continues to motivate Heat’s Tyler Herro: ‘It was tough the way it ended’
It took guard Tyler Herro a few weeks to get over the way last season ended for the Miami Heat.
With a loss to the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals at FTX Arena, the Heat fell just one win short of earning a trip to the NBA Finals. That’s painful enough, but Herro also had to live with the fact that he missed Games 4, 5 and 6 of the conference finals and was limited to just seven minutes of action in Game 7 because of a strained left groin.
“It was tough the way it ended,” Herro, 22, said to the Miami Herald. “I felt like if I was at the level of play I was all season last year, I think we might have a fourth championship. That motivated me.”
That experience motivated Herro to want more for himself and return an improved player, as he pushes to be promoted to a full-time starting role for the first time in his NBA career after becoming the first player in Heat history to be named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year last season.
It looks like Herro will get his wish, too, with the Heat expected to use a starting lineup of Kyle Lowry, Herro, Jimmy Butler, Caleb Martin and Bam Adebayo in its season opener on Wednesday against the Chicago Bulls at FTX Arena.
“I just continue to get better all around,” Herro said as he enters his fourth NBA season. “I’m more experienced, more efficient, stronger, faster, can shoot from longer distances. My handle is tighter. I work really hard, so every summer I’m going to get better.”
That work came after Herro’s production dipped last postseason even before his groin injury, as each of the Heat’s three playoff opponents made it a priority to slow him down with a mixture of traps and ball pressure. He watched film from those games this past summer to make sure he’s better prepared to attack those coverages this season.
“I think I was picking up my dribble a lot in the playoffs,” said Herro, who averaged just 12.6 points while shooting 40.9 percent from the field and 22.9 percent from three-point range last postseason. “When guys were doubling, I would pick it up. I wasn’t as aggressive as I was throughout the season. I think you saw that, which affected my play and a little bit with the team too. If I was healthy and playing at the level I was playing at all year, I think we had a really good chance.”
That disappointment led Herro to step away from basketball for two weeks immediately after the end of the Heat’s season. He vacationed with friends and family before beginning his offseason workouts.
Then there were the trade rumors Herro had to deal with this past summer as the Heat pursued Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant. That only added to the uncertainty surrounding Herro’s future with the Heat, with questions already swirling whether the organization would sign him to an extension before the mid-October deadline.
“No, but rightfully so,” Herro said when asked if he feels he gets the outside respect he deserves. “I’m still a young guy in the league. I think LeBron still feels like he’s not respected enough. So I don’t know if at any point you get the respect you want and who you get the respect from is what really matters. I feel like my peers and the people in the league, they respect me and they know how I play and how good I am and what I’m capable of. So I think I get the respect from the right people.”
In the end, the Heat proved how much it respects Herro by rewarding him with a four-year extension that includes $120 million guaranteed and another $10 million in incentives. The deal keeps him under contract with Miami through the 2026-27 season.
“Really, what else could people say?” Herro said of the validation that the extension provides. “I just signed an extension in Miami, a place where I want to be and where they want me to be. This is where I’ll hopefully stay for my career.”
The extension doesn’t guarantee how long Herro will be with the Heat. But it does provide him with enough long-term security to consider himself a big part of the organization’s future.
The duo of Adebayo and Herro are key components of the Heat’s present, but also essential to the team’s future as two of the NBA’s bright young stars. That dynamic has led to a few conversations between Adebayo and Herro ahead of the season.
“Between each other, we know what it’s going to take to get this team over the hump and win a championship,” Herro said. “We think whether it’s Bam scoring more, me scoring the ball, a combination of both, and just being overall better leaders and better in every way possible. I think that’s what we’ve talked about, how we can push this thing forward.”
Adebayo, 25, is entering the second season of a five-year, $163 million max contract extension he signed in the 2020 offseason. The deal keeps him under contract with the Heat through the 2025-26 season.
“You got two guys that are hungry and want to go out there and prove they should be in this position,” Adebayo said of his partnership with Herro. “Prove that we deserve our money and prove that we can win at the highest level. We’ve been to so many playoffs, the Finals, the Eastern Conference finals. Being battle tested, just having that to test our mental [toughness] and test our strength and who we are as people for us to come back and prove and come back better and finally feel like we can get to the top.”
Herro’s goals this season? “I want to be an All-Star, definitely be an All-Star. And I just want to continue to get better. I want to win a championship.”
Herro has grown a lot since he was drafted by the Heat with the 13th overall pick in the 2019 draft as a 19-year-old.
There was his breakout bubble performance in the 2020 playoffs as a rookie that helped to fast-track Herro’s development and set high expectations for his career. Then there was the disappointment stemming from some tough stretches in Herro’s second NBA season that humbled him. And Herro is now motivated to build on last season’s career-best campaign.
“I think I’m more mature on and off the floor,” Herro said when asked how he has changed since he was drafted in 2019. “I think obviously my game has gotten better, but I think I’ve also matured off the floor. That translates straight to the floor. It’s kind of hand in hand. So I think in that way, I’ve changed but I’ve just kind of adapted to my surroundings.”
Becoming a father in September 2021 when his daughter, Zya Elise Herro, was born also changed Herro.
“It just feels nice overall. I’m happier,” Herro said. “I wake her up every morning before I leave for practice or shootaround. Grabbing her out of bed is like better than anything I do all day. That’s the best thing to do. It’s helped me mature and it’s put me in position to provide for her and the rest of my family.”
Herro is now expecting his second child, his first son, to be born in January. He hopes that it comes in the middle of another season of growth, as the Heat looks to make a deep playoff run for third time in Herro’s first four NBA seasons.
“We don’t understand why people feel like we don’t have enough,” Herro said. “We’ve been to the Finals almost two of the last three years. I mean, we’ve pretty much had more success than anybody in the East over the last three years. Us, Milwaukee and Boston. So at the end of the day, we feel like we’re in prime position to keep chipping away and setting ourselves up to be in that position again.”
