Miami Heat: Tyler Herro out for start of season (& longer) due to foot surgery | Five on the Floor

Miami Heat: Tyler Herro out for start of season (& longer) due to foot surgery | Five on the Floor

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[Applause] [Music] Welcome to Five on the Floor, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Sander, Alex Toledo, Brady Hawk, and others from the Five Reason Sports Network. Also, make sure to subscribe to Off the Floor for the most heat anywhere. All right, welcome back to Five on the Floor. Here’s today’s floor plan. I’m Ethan Skolnick and follow me at Ethan J. Skolnick and at Five Reason Sports. Make sure you’re doing that. And also here with me is Greg Slander. So, there is some news. Tyler Herro will miss at the least the start of the NBA season. It will be longer than that. I can tell you that much. I’m not going to get into a lot on timetable on this particular podcast because honestly as we’re recording this podcast uh they haven’t had a chance to evaluate it yet. Okay. Yeah. Because procedure is today. Uh but I’m going to give you a little bit of background about how this came about and uh now Anthony Chang and Miami Herald has tweeted more details about it. Some of which I knew, some of which were new to me also. Um but we wanted to get the information out there as this was going on. on again. We’re and Shams tweeted it as we were introing this podcast. Just Well, I guess I wasn’t wrong then. So, Shams tweeted it then. You beat Shams. I wasn’t I wasn’t wrong. Trying to make light of a otherwise not fun topic. No, it’s not a fun topic. Um, but Tyler is going to miss uh some time uh with because of a procedure to his foot. I know uh Anthony characterized his foot ankle. I’m again I’m not going to get into the medical angle on this. A I’m not a doctor. I haven’t evaluated him. There’s also, you know, there’s privacy concerns and all that that plays into it. The point is that Tyler Herro is not going to be with the Heat at the start of the season. Um, I I do know, and Anthony has reported this, that they hoped to avoid the procedure. Okay, that that I do know. There were some whispers behind the scenes that I’ve been privy to and they were hoping to avoid the procedure that it might recover in some way. Now, I know the next question, Greg, and we’re going to do a ton of podcasts on this, and we’re going to cover all the angles. We’re going to cover it from the uh we’re going to do a podcast on, okay, how do they adjust their lineup? How do they adjust their rotation? How does this affect Powell? How does this affect Bam? How does this affect Then we’re going to do another episode on how this affects contract negotiations? Because one of the big things with Tyler was he was healthy last year. He played 75 games. He’s not going to play 75 games this year. I can assure you of that. I don’t know how many he’s going to play, but we start looking in the 50s, okay? At this point, all not the 70s. All right? There’s going to be time missed here. Uh and we’ll do other episodes, of course, on on how the Heat I think Greg, you and I should probably do this one, how the Heat have adjusted in the past to lengthy absences. Uh this this stuff has happened to them a lot at the start of seasons. Title Hero is not Alonzo Morning, but he’s a key player for the Heat. They had to adjust to Zo’s absence right before the season. This is again not the first time um they have an organization that’s accustomed to handling it. Sometimes they’ve adjusted well. The morning one and again we’ll do a full episode on this but in the 20 in the 20201 season when Pat was the coach Eric of course at that point I think was still in the video room. Um you know they went 42 and 27 without morning and then Zo came back they went eight and five and they got swept out of the playoffs in the first round but again they’ve been they they’ve adjusted without Bosch as uh Spolster did that. Lel Deng stepped in after the All-Star break and they took off. So there have been Euing theory for those who are familiar with that Euing theory type runs for the Heat where a player goes out and others emerge and I don’t want to rule that out but the initial news is just not great. I mean this is your leading scorer. This is a guy who whatever his defensive uh limitations may be carried you a lot last year. Uh did all the right things improved his game and was efficient. Okay. as an offensive player again until the playoffs when nobody was. And so this is not a good thing. So I’m just going to let you comment on that. But I I do want to start by saying again what I know now. I can’t say everything I know now, but what I know and I can report he’ll miss camp. He’s going to miss the start of the season. It’s a foot ankle situation. Uh, and I don’t believe, but again, I don’t want to get too deep into the medical, that it is related to previous foot injuries that he’s had. Uh, only because I have been told it’s the different foot. Uh, if you recall, um, he’s had a couple of foot problems. There was one that he had, I think it was 2024 where he said he didn’t know how it happened. It just started hurting him. remember that came after he had another injury. I think it was the knee and everybody was focusing on that, but it was actually the foot injury that was keeping him out. So, again, I don’t want to get too deep into the medicals here, but just your initial thoughts about the fact that Tyler Hero, a leading scorer, is going to be out for a significant amount of time. Yeah, and obviously information is coming in on this and uh when it’s medical stuff, we we tread lightly. Shams when it Shams when he tweeted excuse me uh said it was his left foot. So um well that’s not the same just so you know that is not the same foot as as the reports that I’ve seen uh from previous situations. So that would mean it’s a different it’s a different injury uh doesn’t mean again that he’s never had any problems with this one but yes he reported left foot and that is what I heard also. So yeah. Um so my initial reaction is that sucks. Like this uh basically even even someone like me who wants to hope traffic and I actually dead ass honest excited for heat games. It puts a damper on the start of this season because you needed Tyler to be his best self. There was a lot of him betting on himself in another season where he told Pat it’s going to cost you more and you wanted to see him back that up with another all-star campaign. Uh you wanted to see him fit next to Norm and now it looks like they’re going to have to immediately hand the keys to Norm Pal to be a primary scoring option. Although I get the sense uh and especially the more I check in with um with people around the building, they’re going to lean into BAM. I think Bam’s gonna average more shot attempts than people think. Uh, and this will just obviously accelerate that. But overall, this is a really crappy day for Heat fans to hear something like this because any hope you had of this team coming together and outperforming expectations. And, you know, we said this could be the year Spolstra could lead a coach of the year campaign because no one’s expecting anything out of them. Well, now everyone’s really not expecting anything out of them. And so they can either put their, you know, hard hats on and figure out a way to get through that period, which will raise questions about Tyler Hero in other ways. And so we do have a lot of content to get out here. But the immediate reaction is it kind of shoots the season in the foot before it even gets off the ground. And that’s a crappy feeling that I’m not going to try to sugarcoat or hope traffic any other way. Yeah, this is not good news. I mean, let let’s not frame it that way. I see some even internally in our group who were saying that this could be a blessing in disguise and I I understand there are some look we’re not a monolith at Five Reasons Sports. Okay, I don’t suppress opinion and there are some I mean they own their pick. They own their pick and some some in our group are not big Tyler fans. That’s that’s all I actually I think that the uh the opinion of Tyler is is higher I think in our core four of the podcast than it is with the rest of our group. And I try to bring on those voices because again we don’t want to just give you one opinion on everything. But there are some in our group who do think this could be a blessing in disguise in a few ways. Okay, which and by the way I’m going to I’m going to shoot all this down at the end. Okay, but the the thought process is a well there’s no question about the starting lineup now. You’re going to start likely DaVon with Norm and you’re going to get defense in your starting group, right? Larson’s going to play more. It means that maybe the rookie gets some run here. It also could mean Terry Rosier gets some runs. So, be prepared for that. He’s gonna get the first shot at it. I bet you. I I think so. And And you got to be careful with Rosier because if you are trying to move him, you can’t get him hurt. Uh then there’s Drew Smith, who is not ready yet from my understanding, but has been ahead of schedule. Uh he was getting ready to play five on five a couple weeks ago. I haven’t checked back in on that, but So, they have guards. Okay, that’s not the issue. They don’t have a lot of scoring. They don’t have a ton of three-point shooting. Thank you. And and we and we’ve done this these episodes, Brady, myself, Alex, you, where we’ve talked about like, well, the one positive is that their two best shooters are going to shoot really high volume. Now, one of those two shooters is out. Norm is going to see a lot more attention than he would have seen if Tyler was out there. He could get off to a slower start. I know that some have said, “Well, this is good. He’ll get a chance to emerge. They’ll get a chance to evaluate him.” but they don’t get a chance to evaluate the two of them together, which is really what you wanted to see to see how that thing fit as you’re trying to decide on extensions for both. The other part of this, and we’re going to do a full episode on this, I don’t want to invest 20 minutes on it now, but but it could bring Tyler’s price down. U that’s the other quote unquote blessing in disguise that some in our group are citing, but I only think that’s the case if this is a chronic thing. And that’s why I was surprised when I heard it was the left foot because I I believe and I could be wrong about this, but in all the reports, and I can’t remember everybody’s left or right or whatever, but I I do remember it being Tyler’s right foot that had given him problems before. So, I don’t know about the relation to previous injuries. I don’t know if this is a chronic situation. Um, he had described the other one as chronic previously or it had been when the reports came out. So again, all of this plays into it, but the long story short, and I’m going to let you get in here on the other side, it’s not good. I I I I can’t, you know, it’s never good when a good player is out, okay? On a team that doesn’t have enough proven good players. It it’s just not. And they may recover from it in some ways. They may be better defensively. Uh, but their early season schedule, let’s get to that on the other side. Their their early season schedule, we have talked about how brutal it is. And I’m telling you, those those first nine games or whatever, they’re without giving away the timetable, I don’t think you’re going to see Tyler Hero in any of those. And that is problematic. It’s problematic for a team that doesn’t have uh, you know, it doesn’t have elite talent up and down the roster. They’ve got some growing young players, but they they’re not they’re not a contender, and this makes them less so. So, that’s not great. All right. Well, what you don’t want to be doing, okay, especially on a day like this, which is depressing for Heat fans, uh, is trying to figure out where your money went, right? Okay. Cuz, you know, you deserve to feel safe from fraud and in control. That’s exactly what you can expect from Cash App. So, when you get the Cash App card, not only do you get access to a ton of perks and benefits like exclusive early access to nationwide concert pre-sales or discounts on popular brands, but you also have security with the power to instantly lock or unlock your card right from your phone in just one tap. With Cash App, you can spend, save, and live your life knowing your money is right where you left it with built-in security, advanced built-in security protections you can count on and help when you need it. Spend with peace of mind today and order a Cash App card in the app or at cash.app/card. Also, for a limited time only, new Cash App customers can use our exclusive code to earn some additional cash. Just download Cash App. Use our exclusive referral code on the floor in your profile. Send five bucks to a friend within 14 days. You get $10 dropped right into your account. Terms apply. That’s money. That’s Cash App. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s banking partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC. Instant discounts provided by Cash App, a blocking brand. Visit cash.app/ back/legal backpodcast for full disclosures. Okay, so let’s we’re just going to do a couple more minutes on this and we’re going to get this up and then we’re going to do more podcast. Also, check out Sports Illustrated uh heat site. I manage that, so you’ll probably find a lot of coverage there. I’m going to got to activate. Alex, wake up. Where are you? Anyway, uh the early season schedule, it’s it’s got to be concerning, right? Like, yeah, you look at the teams they’re playing and now that that you’re taking a 23 24 point scorer out of the lineup, I that’s not great. No. Uh, it’s a couple things. One, like that was going to be I guess one of the two stabilizing factors heading into this season was you were hoping that Bam and Tyler with the Jimmy crap behind them um could start to carve out a different path. And I think you’re going to see that from Bam. I thought you’d see it from Tyler. Now Tyler’s not going to be there. There’s just no there’s no positive spin on this. Um you talk about the early season schedule. It’s going to be rough, but this is what I think um unfortunately we’re going to have to talk about and it may be not this episode that we deep dive on it, right? But it’s going to be uh topics for discussion throughout the season. First off, you can put the Andrew Wiggins trade rumors to bed because I think they’re going to actually now ask Wiggins to have a bigger role offensively to get them through this. Uh, and that’s going to be in an effort to save the season and make it something where they could make a run when Tyler’s back conceivably. But if things go south because the early schedule is rough and then they go on the West Coast trip and if things really go off the rails and if Tyler doesn’t come back and look like his best self and things are just not looking good, the onus is going to be on the team as you’ve talked about in your recent episode about how the word you gave heading into this year’s uncomfortable. Well, now this is a lot more uncomfortable, Ethan. And where where it’s going to get more uncomfortable is if you’re uh falling in the standings, your best player is injured, banged up, or whatever you want to call it, depending on how he recovers and all that, and we’ll see how that goes. And y’all know, I wish him the best. I want him to be his best self out there on the court. uh are they going to then need to look at uh expiring like Norm Pal as a trade asset, Andrew Wiggins as a trade asset, and how they handle the team building ripple effects that this could cause in a season that could be one that maybe doesn’t get off the ground from the beginning. And I think how quickly they recognize that and make the proactive moves is going to be something that we monitor, right? because I just think that that’s it’s the prudent thing to think about if this year falls off the rails. And it’s why when everyone was so angry that they didn’t want to keep that 2025 pick and make the playoffs, it’s because they wanted this pick so that they had and a lot of times the example used in that building is if Bam were to go down, what the hell would we do? Because that’s a really legitimate thing. Like for me, this is a 25 win team without Bam. But without Tyler, it’s going to hurt a lot too. and now they at least have their draft pick. So, the team building component of all this I just think is a macro conversation that I don’t want to get into it too much today because I want Tyler to get better and it’s crappy news and let’s not uh muddy the waters about what the real news of today is, but inevitably that’s going to be the conversations. Well, I think the one positive that can be taken out of the timing of this, and I know everybody’s be like, why didn’t he do it sooner? But it does seem like there was a real effort to try to avoid this and so you take it as up as long as you can. I don’t I haven’t heard anything like this is like a shack waiting to get surgery with the Lakers or anything like that. Contractual reasons or anything like that. Okay. If if some of that comes out, we’ll address it, right? He wants to play. Uh so, but I I do think the one positive here is that it it’s not an injury that happened in camp. like Spo has a couple of weeks now to at least process this has probably been aware since I do know that a lot of people in the building have been aware of this for a while uh or what was going on. So the coach knew okay uh what was possible here and has had time to at least look at what his lineups and his rotations are going to be and what he wants to emphasize in camp and going forward. If this happened on October 3rd, you know, Tyler goes out with an injury and is having surgery. To me, that’s much more of a thunderbolt, to use one of Riley’s words, than this is. This is unfortunate. Uh, but he has adjusted uh to worse before Spolstra has. And the Bosch thing, the the Bosch thing is the best example I can use for him. I He’s had to do it many times. Well, he had to do it with Bosch during the playoffs where if you remember, I mean, literally in Indiana, okay, when Bosch’s rib c whatever that injury was is abdominal and he had to decide between what, Rooney Turah or Dexter Pitman and ultimately, you know, went to the smaller lineup with Bad like that’s a thunderbolt. Okay, Bosch getting injured, not injured, but the blood clot while at the All-Star game. that report comes out the second blood clot uh you know when they were in Toronto and all that and coming out and there were only two games over 500 and coming out of that break and having to okay what are you going to do now like with a couple days to repair and we’re going to move Deng to the four that’s a thunderbolt this is Goran’s injury in the finals is a Goran’s injury in the finals Bam going out like that you know Jimmy hurting the ankle okay you know in in the in the playoffs when he was having that you know magical run like those are thunderbolts like okay and and even Tyler are getting hurt before the playoffs. Good point. In right and and not being available and that kind of game that the team was playing about him going out and shooting in warm-ups but not playing and when is he going to play all of that I think okay is is more traumatic than this only in the sense of it’s before the season. they kind of knew what could play out here even if they were trying to avoid it. And now he has a couple of weeks to sort of figure it out. And the hope is that he’ll be back, you know, at the very least, and I’m not trying to give away timetable, but at the very least early in 2026, uh he he’ll is sort of, you know, could be the worst case scenario. If if that’s if that’s what this is and the team has, you know, found a way to gel without him, then we start to have other topics, like how are they going to adjust to his return, which by the way, he wouldn’t be the first in that regard either because they’ve had to adjust to Bosch’s return. They’ve had to adjust to Zo’s return. They’ve had to adjust to lots of players return. This is why, and I’ll close it here. This is why you do want an experienced organization handling this kind of stuff. They’ve been through all this before, okay? In one way or another. So it that’s not what’s going to tank them. It it’s and I I don’t want to use that word people. That’s a loaded word right now. I that’s not what that that’s not what’s gonna sink them, but it’s not good. Okay? It’s not good. And I and I I don’t really want to see anybody celebrating this today because if if you are, that’s kind of stupid. You don’t want good players getting hurt. Okay? That’s it. Especially good players who want to be on the court like this one does. Uh and he’s a good player who wants the ball as you said. That’s all this is about. and I hopefully he gets back healthy soon. All right, appreciate it, Greg. Uh, we got lots of content to get out and we’ll we’ll follow in a whole bunch of different ways. Uh, again, check out the Sports Illustrated site, cash out. Use the code on the floor. Subscribe to Off the Floor Price Fix. Use the code FIV. Keep it here. You know, we uh, you know, we tell you we do know people sometimes. Sometimes we get one. Sometimes we get one. Have a good one, everybody. Thank you for listening to the five on the floor on the Fiver Sports Network. After all, someone needs to listen to my dad.

Sources told Five Reasons Sports and the Five on the Floor podcast that Tyler Herro was having a procedure on his foot/ankle and would miss the start of the season. Ethan Skolnick and Greg Sylvander give their immediate thoughts on the situation.

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