Norman Powell reacts to the public perception of Tyler Herro pairing

Following up a four game losing streak with five days off before the next game for the Miami Heat is a slippery slope for many outside observers.

While Erik Spoelstra and the coaching staff are utilizing this time as practice days to correct some things on both the offensive and defensive sides of the floor, media and fans have been all over social media playing the blame game for the cause of Miami's recent skid.

Tyler Herro has been at the center of those discussions. It's nothing new for him, as it's been an annual thing for him at this point.

Conversations around him needing to be a sixth man before being an All-Star starter a year ago, seeing the Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo led Heat go on a 2023 playoff run to the Finals with him sidelined, and now as Miami came out to a hot start to the season behind Norman Powell and their depth as he recovered from the foot procedure.

"Real basketball heads know what’s going on, Twitter is Twitter," said Herro at practice today when asked about that current narrative.

Norman Powell on how quick the online chatter turned on the Herro/Powell pairing

“If we do something good everybody saying we’re going to be championship team, you go through a couple losses people send you DMs and put out memes and information about how there’s a problem… We… https://t.co/ogNBwU1GIR pic.twitter.com/rTkFFYgyoJ
— Heat Central (@HeatCulture13) December 12, 2025

Zachary Weinberger of Clutch Points spoke with Norman Powell at practice on the matter, which he said: “If we do something good, everybody's up in arms, saying we're going to be a championship team, and you'll go through a couple losses, miss a couple shots, people are going to be in your DMs and putting out memes and information about how there's a problem.”

"We know basketball," he continued. "We know it is going to take a second for everybody to get comfortable."

That's the key part of this entire conversation. It's not that Herro walked in and changed any certain part of the offense. It's the result of having any 25 point per game scorer work back into an offensive system that was scoring at the highest rate in the league at the time.

It was never supposed to just gel together perfectly out the gate. Naturally when a scorer of his caliber returns, somebody or multiples players are going to take a slight offensive hit.

Now it's about working around that to try and divide the shot profile up accordingly.

A real basketball conversation that holds more importance regarding Herro is trying to get him more threes again. That's a valid X's and O's observation that the staff is working on altering, as he's struggled to find room from the perimeter in his first six games.

Getting Powell and Herro more time on the floor together is going to be a priority for this Heat team in order to fast-track it. And while the two of them were all smiles today at practice regarding their relationship on and off the court, I'd say they're ready for Monday to get here to prove it.