Tyler Herro #14 of the Miami Heat reacts following the Heat's 128-97 victory over the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena on February 20, 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia. Todd Kirkland Getty Images
After spending so much of this season watching games from the bench, Miami Heat guard Tyler Herro is just happy to be back on the court playing in games.
Herro made his return on Friday after missing the previous 15 games because of a rib injury and made an immediate impact with his scoring ability, totaling a game-high 24 points on 9-of-14 shooting from the field, 2-of-4 shooting on threes and 4-of-4 shooting from the foul line, four rebounds, three assists and one steal in 23 minutes off the bench in the Heat’s 128-97 blowout win over the Hawks in Atlanta.
“It felt great,” Herro said following Friday’s victory before the Heat returned home to complete its back-to-back set on Saturday night against the Memphis Grizzlies at Kaseya Center. “Ultimately just being out there was what felt amazing. Being out there with my teammates, playing in the game, being able to go through my routine again. It felt good.”
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra added on Herro’s return Friday: “It was definitely encouraging. Obviously, it’s been a unique season for him. We know how competitive he is, we know how much he wants to be out there. But those are the things you can’t control. But we have never forgotten about the talent that he brings. He changes our dynamic quite a bit.”
Simply being available and playing is important to Herro, especially since Friday marked only the 12th game he has played in this season.
Herro has dealt with injury issues all season, missing 45 of the Heat’s first 57 games this season. He missed the first 17 games of the season due to offseason ankle surgery, 13 games because of a toe contusion and then 15 straight games because of a rib injury before returning Friday.
“Just happy to be playing basketball again,” Herro, 26, said. “It’s been a rough couple months, going through different knick-knack injuries. Nothing really super big of an injury that’s going to affect my whole body or career in the long term, which is the hard part about it because it’s just small little injuries that I have to get over. So I’m happy to be back.”
While it wasn’t an injury that cost Herro his entire season, it was a painful one.
Herro needed more than a month to recover from three fractured ribs after suffering a buckle rib fracture during the Heat’s Jan. 10 road loss to the Indiana Pacers. Herro went on to play the next three games with the help of Toradol shots to ease the pain, but a subsequent MRI on his ribs revealed the severity of the injury.
The Heat listed Herro’s injury as “right costochondral; injury to the ribs,” which refers to the joints where ribs connect to cartilage. That added to the pain that Herro dealt with while sidelined.
“Tyler is a competitor,” Spoelstra said. “These injuries have been unfortunate, but they’ve been real. He had three broken ribs. He was trying to play through it and just wasn’t able to sustain that by doing shots and everything. So It was needed to get this rest and recovery and rehab.”
Herro is wearing a flak jacket to protect himself during games, stating that he remains unsure if his ribs are fully healed yet.
“I haven’t looked at my ribs. We haven’t done another image, but I feel good,” said Herro, who is in his seventh NBA season after being drafted by the Heat with the 13th overall pick in 2019. “I’ve taken some hits there in the last couple of days, and it feels a thousand times better than it did prior to. So I feel good. I don’t know what the actual rib looks like if I were to take a picture of it, an MRI or something. But I feel good.”
Herro’s return and standout performance was the story from Friday night’s Heat win, the fact that he played off the bench is also noteworthy.
Friday marked only the fourth game that Herro has played off the bench since the start of the 2022-23 season. His only three games as a reserve before Friday during this stretch came on April 5, 2024 and April 7, 2024 after he returned from a 20-game absence due to right foot medial tendinitis, and then earlier this season in a Jan. 6 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves when he returned from an 11-game absence due to his toe contusion.
But after those two games off the bench toward the end of the 2023-24 season and the one game as a reserve earlier this season, Herro returned to a starting role. It remains to be seen how long Herro will play as a reserve this time.
“Right now we’re just trying to get him out there,” Spoelstra said when asked about his decision to play Herro as a reserve in his return on Friday. “We are going to manage the minutes. I’m not overthinking it, I’m not putting anything in cement, I don’t have a timeline for anything. We’re how many ever games into the season right now and we finally have our full roster. We’re just going to try to maximize these next 25 games as much as possible and we just want everybody just to pour into the team, pour into the role, don’t overthink things at this point.”
Playing Herro off the bench helps make it easier for the Heat to stagger his minutes with starting guard Norman Powell’s minutes, allowing Miami to have at least one of Herro and Powell on the court at all times. Powell and Herro played just three minutes together in Friday’s win over the Hawks.
But Spoelstra made clear Friday that “there will be times for sure where we play those guys together.”
“That will work,” Spoelstra said of playing Herro and Powell together. “I’m not even at all overthinking that one.”
For the season, the Heat has outscored opponents by 4.4 points per 100 possessions in the 146 minutes that Herro and Powell have played together over nine games.
“I just think in the creativity that we both are able to bring,” Powell said of his fit alongside Herro. “Him being able to play with the ball and I’m able to go off the ball, and then vice versa. So, we can have both of us in the corner coming off pin downs. We can have one on the ball, one off the ball and have a different dynamic. I just think we have a lot of versatility in how we’re able to put the ball in the basket.”
The bottom line is the Heat needs Herro available to reach its full potential. Herro, who led Miami in points per game and usage rate last season, will provide a boost to a Heat team that has posted the NBA’s 22nd-ranked offensive rating since the start of January.
Herro made his first NBA All-Star Game last season, when he averaged career highs in points (23.9 points per game) and assists (5.5 per game) while shooting 47.2% from the field last regular season. He also shot an impressive 37.5% on 8.7 three-point attempts per game while playing in a career-high 77 games (all starts) last regular season after never reaching the 70-game mark through his first five NBA seasons.
This season, Herro entered Saturday’s matchup against the Grizzlies averaging 22.1 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists and one steal per game while shooting 50.8% from the field and 36.6% from three-point range in his 12 appearances. Now, he just wants to play more games.
“I just want to get out here and play with the whole team, get comfortable, and just stack some healthy games together,” said Herro, who is eligible to sign an extension worth as much as $206.9 million through four seasons this upcoming offseason,. “Just try to play a stretch of games where I’m healthy. That’s all that’s on my mind.”