Heat’s Tyler Herro undergoes ankle surgery, expected to miss eight weeks. The latest details
The Miami Heat will begin this upcoming season without one of its best players.
With the Heat set to open training camp on Sept. 30, guard Tyler Herro underwent surgery on his left ankle/foot on Friday to repair a lingering injury that has been bothering him this offseason, multiple league sources confirmed to the Miami Herald.
“Tyler Herro underwent successful surgery today to alleviate posterior impingement syndrome in his left ankle,” the Heat confirmed through an announcement on Friday afternoon. “The 90-minute procedure was performed by Dr. Thomas San Giovanni and assisted by Heat team physicians Dr. Harlan Selesnick and Dr. Frantz Lerebours at Doctors Hospital Surgery Center in Miami. Herro is expected to miss around eight weeks.”
With Herro set to miss around eight weeks, a return in mid to late November is possible. For perspective, the Heat plays its 14th game of the regular season on Nov. 17 against the New York Knicks in Miami.
Herro, 25, first felt discomfort in his left ankle during a workout earlier this offseason, according to a league source. Herro received platelet-rich plasma and cortisone injections in recent weeks in hopes of avoiding surgery, but the discomfort never subsided and surgery was deemed necessary to avoid more issues down the road.
The Heat’s offense will miss Herro, who finished last regular season as the team’s leading scorer on the way to being selected for his first NBA All-Star Game. He was the Heat’s lone All-Star last season.
Herro is coming off the best season of his six-year NBA career, averaging career-highs in points (23.9 points per game) and assists (5.5 per game) while shooting a career-best 47.2% from the field last regular season. He also shot an impressive 37.5% on 8.7 three-point attempts per game while playing in a career-high 77 games (all starts) last regular season after never reaching the 70-game mark through his first five NBA seasons.
The Heat scored 8.6 fewer points per possession when Herro wasn’t on the court last season. That drop-off contributed to the Heat’s subpar offense, as it ranked 21st in the NBA in offensive rating last regular season to finish with a bottom-10 offensive rating for the third straight regular season.
Without Herro for the start of the season, the Heat will need to rely on a new face to help fill the scoring void for however long he is out.
Veteran guard Norman Powell, who the Heat acquired in July through a three-team trade that also included the Los Angeles Clippers and Utah Jazz, is expected to slide into Herro’s spot in the starting lineup. Powell was among six NBA players who averaged at least 21 points per game while shooting better than 48% from the field and better than 40% from three-point range last regular season along with Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant, Karl-Anthony Towns, Zach LaVine and Kawhi Leonard.
Other guards on the Heat’s standard roster for this upcoming season are rookie Kasparas Jakucionis, Pelle Larsson, Davion Mitchell, Terry Rozier and Dru Smith.
Along with Herro’s absence, the Heat will need to overcome a challenging early stretch. Not only will the Heat play six of its first eight games on the road and embark on a West Coast trip during the second week of the regular season, but 11 of the Heat’s first 15 games come against opponents that made the playoffs last season.
Herro’s surgery also comes just before he’s allowed to begin talking to the Heat about a lucrative extension.
Starting Oct. 1, Herro is eligible to tack on a three-year, $149.7 million extension to the two seasons ($31 million for the 2025-26 season and $33 million for the 2026-27 season) he already has left on his contract.
If an agreement is not reached on an extension by Oct. 20, Herro would be eligible to sign a four-year, $206.9 million extension during the 2026 offseason. He is supermax eligible (five years, $380 million) if he is selected for an All-NBA team during the 2025-26 season.
Herro and his representatives are expected to meet with the Heat to discuss the possibility of an extension in early October, according to a league source.
Heat president Pat Riley hinted during his season-ending news conference in May that the Heat may wait until next offseason to address a potential Herro extension.
“Pay me now or pay me later, whatever it is,” Riley said. “We’ve already talked about it. I talked about it with Tyler, and so we’ll see what happens as we plan. The numbers are getting pretty big for a lot of guys. Max salaries in this league, who do they go to? I mean, who do they go to and who is really? If you’re going to make $70 million a year, who are those five or 10 guys that deserve that? But Tyler definitely is deserving of the thought of an extension. But are we going to do it? We haven’t committed to it, but we’re going to discuss it and I’ve already talked to him about it. He’s cool.”
The Heat, which has been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in each of the last two seasons, will hold its annual Media Day on Sept. 29 before opening training camp on Sept. 30 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton to kick off the 2025-26 NBA season.
This story was originally published September 19, 2025 at 10:35 AM.
