Miami Heat guard Tyler Herro had some worrisome comments following the team’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday night.
The Heat lost yet another close game on Sunday, even though Kevin Durant exited the game for the Nets with a knee injury. Herro talked about the missed opportunities that the Heat have had in games this season.
“We’ve been feeling like that for a while,” Herro said. “There’s been games where we’ve lost that we felt like we could have won. But at this point, I feel like things aren’t going in the right direction. So we just gotta stay healthy and continue to make things go in that direction.”
The Heat have dealt with injuries to Herro, Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent, Dewayne Dedmon, Duncan Robinson and others this season. That’s made it really hard on the team to find any consistency in the 2022-23 campaign.
The loss on Sunday dropped the Heat to just 21-20 on the season. It’s certainly a step back from the 2021-22 campaign when Miami finished with the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference and only lost 29 games all season.
The Heat hold the No. 8 spot in the Eastern Conference, but they’d certainly like to get into the top six in the conference to avoid the play-in tournament.
Herro, who has played through a thumb injury this season, has been really solid for Miami, especially as a scorer.
The reigning Sixth Man of the Year is averaging 21.2 points, 6.0 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game while shooting 44.5 percent from the field and 39.2 percent from beyond the arc.
Herro signed a long-term extension with the Heat prior to the start of the 2022-23 regular season, so he should be with the team for the long haul. Herro’s contract runs through the 2026-27 season.
He’s become the team’s most reliable scoring option after Butler, and the Heat certainly hope he can keep up his impressive play as they try to make a run up the Eastern Conference standings in the second half of the season.
Even though things haven’t gone the way Herro and the Heat expected this season, there is still plenty of time to turn it around. Miami still has 41 games remaining and it should get players back from injury as the season goes on.
The Heat have made the Eastern Conference Finals in two of the last three seasons, so anything short of that in the playoffs would feel like a disappointment for the team after keeping most of the roster together from last season.