Heat’s Tyler Herro details ‘crazy pinch’ and ‘extra bone’ in foot that led to surgery
One of the biggest Media Day story lines surrounding the Miami Heat this upcoming season has to do with a player who won’t be available for the start of the season.
Just more than a week after undergoing surgery on his left ankle, Heat star guard Tyler Herro spoke to a room filled with reporters on Monday morning at Kaseya Center during the team’s annual Media Day.
“I’ll be back in the next eight to 12 weeks,” Herro said after walking into the interview room with a slight limp.
The Heat announced on Sept. 19 that Herro underwent surgery “to alleviate posterior impingement syndrome in his left ankle.” The team added that Herro is expected to miss eight weeks from the date of his procedure, but Herro extended that timeline out to 12 weeks on Monday.
That timetable has Herro’s return potentially coming as soon as early as mid-November. For perspective, the Heat plays its 14th game of the regular season on Nov. 17 against the New York Knicks in Miami.
“Right now, honestly, I’m ahead of schedule as far as the swelling and things like that,” Herro continued Monday, with the Heat set to begin its four-day training camp Tuesday at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. “All that stuff looks amazing. I should get my stitches out in the next couple days, at some point next week. From there, I can start strengthening my foot and all that good stuff. So I’m doing everything I can to come back before eight weeks.
“I told [Heat coach Erik Spoelstra] I’ll be back in six weeks, so we’ll see. We’ll see what they let me do. But I’m doing everything I can, icing it five times a day. I’m doing everything I can to get back on the court and be available. I just can’t wait to get back out there and playing.”
The injury that will sideline Herro to begin this season is one that had been bothering him for a few months.
Herro, 25, first felt discomfort in his left ankle and foot during a workout at Miami-Dade College in July.
“I was doing my warmup, and I just felt like a crazy pinch in my foot out of nowhere,” Herro recalls of that July workout. “It was very random. We didn’t know what it was, so I get an MRI. Nothing showed up on the MRI. Then a foot specialist said I was born with an extra bone in the back of my foot. It’s like a very small bone. No one could see what that bone was doing.”
Herro received platelet-rich plasma and cortisone injections in hopes of avoiding surgery, but the discomfort never subsided and surgery was deemed necessary to avoid more issues down the road.
“We did a PRP shot and then a cortisone shot, another PRP shot. So we tried everything before surgery,” Herro said. “Ultimately, it was two or three weeks in between each shot. From July to now, three weeks and another three weeks adds up. We got to a week ago and I was like, ‘Bro, I still feel the same pinch in my foot that I felt in July.’ Ultimately, I was working out and I was trying to ramp up and be ready to go for training camp. But there was just no way I was going to be able to play through that pinch in my foot. I couldn’t even jump.”
Spoelstra added Monday that the pain in Herro’s left foot and ankle was “something that was nagging.”
“We felt that might be able to help with treatment and different protocols, but it wasn’t getting better,” Spoelstra said. “So that was the final decision to do [surgery]. ... But he’s going to back sooner than later. By the end of the season, I think the time you miss, you’ll forget about that. How long that will be, we can’t say right now. But whatever was projected out there, I think that’s in the ballpark. He’ll be out there running and doing stuff pretty soon.”
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.
“I just couldn’t jump and get fully to my toes,” Herro said of the discomfort he felt that led to his ankle surgery. “That’s ultimately what I need to jump and use to get by guys. I have to be able to push off that foot and it was locked, honestly. So every time I would try to push my foot forward, it would stop at a certain point and I didn’t have full range of motion in my foot. ... This was actually a bone blocking my foot, so I had to take that bone out.”
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 Herro is out.
Veteran guard Norman Powell, who the Heat acquired in July through a three-team trade 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.
“There are a lot of things that we think fit how we approach the game,” Spoelstra said of Powell on Monday. “He’s excited to be here. With Tyler out, yes, it helps to have that. But with Tyler in, that’s what we’re excited about is the possibilities.”
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 regular-season 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 Wednesday, 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.
“I had an imagination how everything was going to happen before this foot injury,” Herro said. “But I feel like everything happens for a reason. At the end of the day, this isn’t picture-perfect for me. But I’ll keep my head down and keep working. I’m coming off the best season of my career and I feel like I’m going to get right back to that level.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 12:39 PM.
