Who Will The Miami Heat Turn To With Tyler Herro Out?
Defeating the Milwaukee Bucks 130-117 in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series was something nobody saw coming from the Miami Heat. Even though Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo left the game early due to a back injury, this was still an extremely impressive win for the Heat.
Heading into Game 2 on Wednesday night though, the Heat are the ones who will be searching for some answers, as they will have to play the remainder of this series without key offensive talent Tyler Herro who suffered a broken hand in the Game 1 victory.
The Heat, the NBA’s lowest scoring team during the regular season, put up 130 total points in their first game against Milwaukee, a team that ranked fourth in defensive rating during the regular season, but this is not something that will be a nightly occurrence in this series for Miami.
Getting offensive production outside of Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo has been a question mark for the Heat all season long and now, Tyler Herro being out means that the Heat are losing about 15 percent of their total scoring output on the season.
The big question Miami now faces is who will step up with Herro out and be that third “go-to” guy outside of Butler and Adebayo?
The obvious answer for the Heat is veteran guard Kyle Lowry. However, Lowry has been dealing with some knee issues over the last several weeks and the Heat have primarily been utilizing him in their bench unit with Gabe Vincent drawing the start at point guard.
Two other names that stick out as being possible off-ball guards that could start alongside Vincent are Duncan Robinson and Victor Oladipo.
Robinson saw just 16.5 minutes per game with Miami this season and played in just 42 games. He only played in a total of six minutes in Game 1 against Milwaukee and Robinson has only played in 12 games since the start of March, including their win over the Bucks.
As for Victor Oladipo, he continues to be a question mark for this team simply due to the fact he has had trouble remaining healthy. Oladipo was a healthy DNP in Game 1 though and is certainly a player Miami could utilize given his two-way nature of play.
Maybe instead of replacing Tyler Herro with another option at the guard spot, the Heat could look to go big against a lengthy Bucks team. Kevin Love had a terrific Game 1 performance with 18 points and 8 rebounds off-the-bench and Caleb Martin had a strong showing with 15 points off-the-bench.
Erik Spoelstra does like the production of both forwards, so maybe one of them gets elevated into the starting lineup with Max Strus shifting over to Herro’s shooting guard spot.
The point is that the Miami Heat do have a couple of options in terms of putting guys out on the floor to fill Tyler Herro’s minutes.
The problem though is that they will be lucky for a player to replicate his overall production, as Herro has taken a lot of pressure off of both Adebayo and Butler on the offensive-end of the floor this season.
With Tyler Herro out, Jimmy Butler and the Heat find themselves in an eerily similar position they were in during the 2020 NBA Finals when Goran Dragic and Bam Adebayo were both dealing with injuries, leaving Butler as their only source of offensive production.
Obviously Adebayo is healthy right now, which definitely helps the Heat, but this loss of offensive production with Herro being out means Miami must step up in two different areas.
The first is that they must lock in defensively and look like the team they did during the regular season that only surrendered about 109.8 points per game on average, the second-best mark in the league.
The second is that they must continue to find ways to attack the glass on both ends of the floor. They were outrebounded by the Bucks in Game 1, but it was only by two rebounds.
Miami definitely has confidence that they can fight with Milwaukee in this seven-game series after stealing Game 1 on the road and even if Giannis Antetokounmpo is available due to his back injury, the Heat must bring a sense of urgency, physicality and tenacity with them into Game 2 on Wednesday night, specifically in terms of rebounding.
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