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At ripe old age of 24, Heat's Herro appreciating veteran status, 'On the court, I feel a little bit older'

Ira Winderman, South Florida Sun Sentinel on

Published in Basketball

MIAMI — At the ripe old age of 24, Tyler Herro spent time after Tuesday morning’s shootaround at Kaseya Center talking about the kid stuff during the Miami Heat preseason, the sixth-year guard appreciating that this is the time of year when being young doesn’t mean being among the youngest on the roster.

With Tuesday’s matchup against the visiting San Antonio Spurs marking the midpoint of the Heat’s five-game exhibition schedule, Herro spoke of the value of such nights.

“Get all the young guys in there. It’s still early on,” Herro said. “The games obviously don’t count yet, but getting out there with the different lineups, different rotations, just working through ’em right now I think is still important at this time of year.”

Ah, the “young guys,” that from a shooting guard who arrived in the 2019 draft out of Kentucky with a Boy Wonder nickname.

“I’m still a young guy outside of basketball,” Herro said. “But on the court, I feel a little bit older. But, yeah. I’m still a young guy.”

With the Heat a week from next week’s regular-season opener against the visiting Orlando Magic, any doubt of Herro being a starter has dissipated. But Herro said there still is interest to see where coach Erik Spoelstra takes his rotation.

“I think Spo and the coaching staff will obviously work through that,” he said. “We’re a deep team, so there’s going to be obviously a lot of guys initially won’t play because Spo has his set number of rotation guys that he’s going to play.

“That’s why I think at this point in the season these games are important right now, to kind of work through that. Like I said, it’s a deep team, there’s a bunch of lineups that we can play with. So we have to use this time now to kind of do that.”

With the opening lineup featuring combo guards in Herro and Terry Rozier, plus with ballhandlers Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler and Nikola Jovic rounding out the first five, Herro said there is more freedom or movement, without having to worry about designating a point guard.

“It’s huge,” Herro said. “This is probably my first season besides my rookie year where I kind of don’t have as many ballhandling duties as I’ve had in the past. Obviously, I love having the ball in my hands.

“But being able to kind of flow into that is going to be easier on me and be more efficient on my game, just being able to play off of Terry, play off of Jimmy and Bam, and not necessarily having to be the main guard handling the ball.”

 

Even when the Heat had Kyle Lowry on the roster as the primary playmaker, Herro often still found himself often being the player advancing the ball.

“So I think it’s good,” he said of the freedom from such constraints. “I like it. It takes some time getting used to it. I’ve never really done that since I was at Kentucky, but it’s something I’m open to doing and I’m excited about.”

Rozier agreed about the primary guards not having to circle back to advance the ball.

“We’re trying to play fast,” he said. “So when guys can rebound and handle, one through five, in our starting group — and guys off the bench, we got a lot of guys that can handle the ball — it just makes us play faster. We don’t have one guy or two guys coming back for the ball every time.

“So it’s going to help. And that’s what we want to do. We want to play fast.”

First camp

Acquired in January in a trade with the Charlotte Hornets for Lowry and a first-round pick, Rozier, 30, said he has embraced his first Heat training camp.

“I think I can speak for us all, we’re ready for the real thing,” he said. “But this is still a great time for us to keep connecting, for us to keeping building for when the real thing happens. So that’s always good to get out, practice, get a long offseason out of the way, get back moving. So it’s all good.

“These guys have been doing a great job of just making me feel comfortable, and along with the coaches, so it’s been fun. We’re just ready to get the real thing going to see what we can do in the East.”

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