Tyler Herro leads Heat to win over Mavericks in season debut

MIAMI — It took a while, but Tyler Herro was finally able to make his season debut.

As a result, the same fate befell the Miami Heat.

Behind 24 points from Herro – including a floater that gave Miami the lead for good in the final minutes – on Monday night at Kasia Center against the Dallas Mavericks, the Heat ultimately emerged with a 106-102 victory, continuing their hot start and giving everyone a chance to celebrate the team’s leading scorer returning from ankle surgery in September.

“It was a long time, about nine, 10 weeks (when I was out), but it went by fast,” Herro said. “(The team) is having a lot of fun, and it was great to be able to go out there and compete with them tonight.”

Herro had spent the past few weeks getting himself back into full basketball shape, with the goal of having a reasonable expectation of his return to game action later this month – a full two months after surgery. He said that he and the team had been considering this date for the last three weeks.

His return on Monday — the second night of back-to-back games after leading scorer Norman Powell (groin) sat out and Sunday’s win in Philadelphia — was ideal for a Heat team looking to carry on its early-season momentum.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, “It’s amazing that he can come back and get that kind of rhythm going, and it’s only going to get better.” “When you face better defenses, you can see why we need that skill. In this league you need as much skill and lethality as possible.

“And it was very exciting to have him back.”

The Heat needed every point from Herro, as Dallas – who has now played in a league-leading 15th clutch game this season – rallied from 27 points from forward PJ Washington in the fourth quarter after falling behind by 13 points.

But after Washington made a terrible inbounds pass, which Heat center Bam Adebayo swiped away with 48.2 seconds remaining, Herro came down and made a high-arcing floater in the lane that put the Heat up 104–102.

And after both teams made a series of mistakes – including Washington missing a pair of 3-pointers within the final 30 seconds – Adebayo made a pair of free throws to seal the win, the fifth in a row for Miami and the eighth in the Heat’s last 10 games.

“I was in the right position, get to my spot and make a floater,” Herro said of his go-ahead bucket. “But Bam made a big steal…Without Bam, I can’t do that play.”

Herro is coming off the best year of his career last season for the Heat, in which he averaged 23.9 points on 47% shooting and made his first All-Star team.

But after the Heat were eliminated in four games in the first round of the playoffs by the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, Spoelstra went back to the drawing board and dismantled the team’s offensive system, bringing in former Memphis Grizzlies assistant Noah LaRoche as a consultant to employ an entirely different system.

It is a unique system in the NBA, rarely using pick-and-rolls and with Miami playing at the league’s fastest pace. In this everyone will have to take very quick decisions. And as Monday’s game played out, Herro looked like someone who hadn’t played in a few months and was pacing himself.

When asked about Herro’s fit into the scheme, Adebayo said, “You can see it there, man.” “We have a lot of guys who are hard to catch.

“As you see, it’s a fun offense to be a part of. It’s not a lot of pick-and-rolls, but it’s sharing the game. … Everybody feels included in it, everybody gets a chance to be aggressive, and we’re having success with that.”

However, things started to get better for Herro late in the second quarter, when he finally got a bucket in the paint after missing his first four shots to start the game. And once Herro started shooting, he didn’t stop.

He made nine shots in a row, and 12 of his last 14 attempts, almost exclusively on shots in the mid-range and floater range.

The result was a gaudy stat line, even if Herro still has plenty of rust to shake off his game.

“It’s not an adjustment for them in terms of how we play,” Spoelstra said. “He’s going to be a perfect fit. He’ll expand on everything we’re doing.

“I’m happy for him and it’s good that we’ll be able to build, we’ll be able to build on this.”