The Miami Heat didn’t attain any upgrades over the course of free agency or in the trade market this offseason. Instead, Pat Riley and Heat brass are putting all their chips in one final time with the hopes of this current Heat roster putting together a healthy season. Last season was too tough to gauge this team’s ceiling, considering their best players were injured when it mattered the most.
Tyler Herro missed 40 games and returned right before postseason, giving him a small sample size to get a consistent role going. Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier also suffered season-ending injuries and didn’t even participate in a single playoff game. Not to mention all the other availability issues that completely took over the roster from supporting cast players as well.
In what could be their last chance, this Butler/Bam Adebayo/Herro core along with an implemented Rozier added to the mix, needs some sort of spark within the roster as is. It would be reasonable to assume players like Nikola Jovic, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Haywood Highsmith could continue developing into better rotation players. There are also the new draft selections of 7-foot Kel’el Ware and Pelle Larsson, among other new undrafted talent and hungry two-way players.
But what if the Heat look for internal growth by a significant rotation change? Udonis Haslem recently spoke to NBA writer Mat Issa about the state of the Heat, and it surely seemed like he was entertaining the idea of Herro returning to a sixth man role:
“We have a young superstar in Tyler Herro; Sixth Man of the Year and automatic 20 of the bench.”
Eastern conference has gotten better. However, I don’t think anybody understands what a healthy Heat team is capable of.” (- Udonis Haslem)
Although Herro has developed into a starting player for coach Erik Spoelstra, there are statistics to prove that Miami is a better team with Herro coming off the bench.
The Heat have a 283-210 record with Herro as a sixth man, and just a 73-67 record with him as a starter. For more context, the team was the number one seed in the Eastern Conference the same year Herro won Sixth Man of the Year. The two years following have put them in eighth seed play-in status with Herro being promoted to the first unit.
Being the sixth man is a role that Herro not only knows how to excel in individually, but it makes the entire team better with more offensive balance across the rotation. Inserting Rozier in these lineups only adds more to this notion, as it was evident that Rozier and Herro have very similar offensive and defensive capabilities.
Having them together in the lineup hasn’t had a big enough of a sample size to truly critique it, but there is some redundancy from each of their skill sets. A role change from Herro here would instantly mark him as the best sixth man in the entire NBA once again.
The potential bench move would benefit not just himself, but also Rozier and the state of the Heat as a whole.
