After the Miami Heat lost to the Orlando Magic in the NBA Cup quarterfinals on Tuesday, 117-108, it marked the team's fourth straight loss and fifth in the last six games. With the Heat's NBA Cup elimination, fans are wondering what the reason is for the slump and if Tyler Herro is at the forefront of it.
While it would be easy to point his way with the team having slowed down in the six games he's played in, with the group being 3-3, it goes beyond Herro's presence. The statistics show that it isn't a Herro problem for the team, as when he's on the floor, Miami has outscored teams by 3.6 points per 100 possessions in the 191 minutes he's played.
Even looking at the loss to Orlando, where he scored 20 points, the team outscored the Magic by 8.1 points per 100 possessions, but the Heat was outplayed by 50 points per 100 possessions in the 14 minutes he was on the sidelines.
The one aspect that fans were excited to see is the backcourt duo with star Norman Powell, though head coach Erik Spoelstra believes they'll be “fine.”
“We’ll have that opportunity in games to work on that,” Spoelstra said, according to The Miami Herald. “They’ve been working on it behind the scenes. It’s only [72] minutes. So that’ll continue to get better. If you have the skill level that they have, that they both can shoot the basketball, they both can put the ball on the floor, and they both want to make it work, based on my experience, those things work out. And we need it. We need it, quite frankly. As we move forward, we need our firepower.”
Tyler Herro, Norman Powell on Heat's ‘adjustment period'
It has been an injury-riddled Heat season for Herro thus far, as besides missing the first 17 games of the season due to an offseason ankle surgery, he suffered a toe injury that kept him out for two games. Herro would admit it's still a “work in progress” for him to get back to 100 percent health and also fortify the chemistry with Miami under their new fast-paced offense.
“It was my sixth game tonight,” Herro said after the Magic loss. “So just coming out here, it’s going to be a work in progress….I just got to continue to fight. We all are trying, and we want to win obviously, and that’s what matters. We’re all intentional, and we just got to continue to work at it, continue to get better. I think this next couple days, get a little break and then get right back to it.”
Powell would downplay the middling results so far with Herro and others returning to the lineup, even saying that in the adjustment period the team is in, “it's going to take maybe another four or five games” to build back the chemistry.
At any rate, after starting 11-6, the Heat are now 14-11 with a break until practice on Friday ahead of Monday's game against the Toronto Raptors.
