Tyler Herro’s injury issues are a continued longterm concern

With a max extension on the table, Tyler Herro’s injury riddled 2025-26 season has come at an inopportune time for the former All-Star.
(Photo via Getty Images)

This has been a nightmare season for the Miami Heat’s Tyler Herro. And it hasn’t even fallen onto his performance, which has included poor defense and a few inefficient outings in the whopping six games he has appeared in.

Instead, it’s the injuries. Which has been the story of Herro’s seven-year career in Miami.

I like Tyler Herro but the missed games are getting out of hand especially early in his career.

He’s had 1 season out of 7 of truly being healthy.

Durability has been an issue for way too long. pic.twitter.com/VPBu3xkyY8

— 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙩𝘾𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 (@WadexFlash) January 4, 2026

The 25-year-old combo guard missed his 13th consecutive game for the Heat during Sunday’s win over the New Orleans Pelicans, despite being upgraded to available before the start of the game. The team listed him as “available as part of his ramp-up but is not expected to play.”

After already missing the first 17 games recovering from offseason ankle surgery, it didn’t take long for Herro to almost instantly get sidelined with yet another injury after he returned. Now he has been dealing with a toe injury, and the way that he and the Heat have handled it has been odd. Surely his conditioning may benefit from the “ramp-up” that the team disclosed after being out for so long. But they are still listing him as day-to-day.

Erik Spoelstra on Tyler Herro: “He’s been putting in a lot of work. He’s getting closer. This is just more to get the mindset ready for the next step. He’ll be traveling with us, but he’s still day-to-day. I don’t have an exact date when he’ll be ready.”

— Anthony Chiang (@Anthony_Chiang) January 4, 2026

Clearly, missing 13 straight games was never a day-to-day situation.

All these missed games for Miami has evidently made building chemistry as a team more difficult to stack together wins. Herro is such an important piece to the offense, and his absence has made for rotations and roles on a game-to-game basis inconsistent for the rest of the roster.

The former 2024 All-Star is already ineligible for any All-NBA honors. He is all but guaranteed to not be returning to All-Star status, either. And after all of these absences on the court, it only makes Herro’s looming pay day seem that much more out of reach.

Tyler Herro has missed 30 of the Miami Heat’s 36 games so far this season.

When healthy, Herro has proven that he is an All-Star caliber talent. He remains a legitimate three-level scoring threat that can get the Heat a bucket anywhere on the court. In his brief six appearances this season, he is averaging 23.2 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.3 assists and one steal per game on 50.5/40.5/92.3 shooting splits. Seems impressive, right?

The reality is that the best ability is availability, and that’s something Herro has failed to do this year and majority of his time on the Heat.

He was due for a three-year $150 million extension this October, but Pat Riley and the Heat front office opted to hold off. That decision has already proven to be a brilliant one.

The idea of giving an injury prone player a $50 million annual promotion in the midst of his most injury prone campaign yet, is just gross to think about. It could be a financial commitment that could heavily limit Miami’s ability to re-tool over the next several trade deadlines and/or offseason.

Herro and the Heat could revisit extension talks at the end of this season, but even that appears unlikely after the season he has put together. He is still under contract throughout all of next season for $33 million before becoming an unrestricted free agent in 2027.

This is also coming from a front office who refused to pay Jimmy Butler a max extension, despite leading overperforming rosters to multiple NBA Finals runs. Herro hasn’t even proven to be a reliable playoff player yet, nonetheless carrying a group all the way like Butler did. If players got paid based on stats alone, maybe there is a case that Herro’s numbers do show a $50 million caliber player.

But the inability to just stay healthy will always trump any performance on the court, especially to the eyes of an old-school team president like Riley.

Tyler Herro’s injury issues are a continued longterm concern

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