Miami Heat: Pat Riley playing coy or extremely serious on Tyler Herro?

The Miami Heat have work to do as they look toward the offseason. With a very early exit at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks, the Miami Heat now have to regroup and re-tool to do it all over again next season, but hopefully to better results.

While “re-tooling” is a major part of the equation, the Miami Heat also have some sorting to do when it comes to some of their own current pieces. While the potential $15M dollar case of Kendrick Nunn needs to be sorted, along with the really nice raise that Duncan Robinson is definitely set to earn, Tyler Herro has heard his name on the rumor mill for the last season or so as well.

Even with those rumors though, the Miami Heat’s Godfather made it his business to, sort of, quell the noise. Speaking last week, Pat Riley had these things to say of Herro.

"He’s a core player. That’s all there is to it… he’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out with him, but what happened to him going down the stretch, I actually thought he got better as a player. If you think about his first year or his first 35 or 40 games, he really was strictly a catch-and-shoot type of player coming off screens and catching and shooting.And the only way that he was ever going to become more of a complete offensive player is he had to improve his ball handling with both his right hand and his left hand, and he did. He’s an exceptional ball handler and now he can create space and get into gaps and raise on jumpers from almost anywhere."

The Miami Heat are in the business to make moves this offseason, but is Tyler Herro to be among the moved?

Well, there’s really only one question. What is supposed to be made of what Riley said?

Though Riley called him a “core player”, there were those aforementioned trade rumors. Who’s to say that this isn’t Pat Riley… pulling a Pat Riley. 

Known to be a master of the NBA deal, especially when it comes to getting his way, he could be drumming up the buzz, interest, and/or value in Tyler Herro to potentially try to move him. Now, Herro is still a very good young player, so he doesn’t need a ton of boosting but everything helps, right?

Is that what’s going on here? No chance.

You have to take Pat Riley at face value with this one. Herro is still the guy that helped lead the Miami Heat through the postseason bubble last year.

He had a few sparks coming down the stretch of the season and after the trade deadline passed, however, you can’t single him out for his lack of playoff abundance. Nobody could hit shots in the playoffs, so he definitely wasn’t alone.

At the end of the day, Tyler Herro is apart of the future, at least for the coming season. Beyond that is still in the air, but as far as this coming offseason and next season, Herro is still a part of the core that won’t be going anywhere.