The follow-up to Tyler Herro's All-Star breakout is off to a rough start. Before the Heat's star guard even made it to training camp, he wound up sidelined for the foreseeable future by ankle surgery. While Miami might have a capable replacement thanks to fleecing Norman Powell away from the Los Angeles Clippers, this is still the kind of setback that could send the whole season spiraling.
Between Herro's injury and the squad's brutal schedule to start, it's entirely possible the Heat will put themselves behind the proverbial 8-ball and have to play catch-up in the Eastern Conference. That won't be easy, but Herro has an idea for how it can happen: authoring a sequel to his All-Star season that's even better than the original.
As Herro told reporters, he thinks he can make it back to last season's form "very, very easily" and feels like he could go to "maybe a higher level." That's a bold ambition for someone coming off a career campaign, but it's just the kind of thinking that could help the Heat overcome the hurdles they've already encountered.
Leveling-up from last season won't be easy for Herro.
Since Herro had never performed like he did last season—by volume and efficiency—it's fair to wonder whether Heat fans might have been watching some kind of aberration. He deserved to hit these marks, obviously, but he'd still never been this productive: 23.9 points on 47.2/37.5/87.8 shooting with 5.5 assists against 2.6 turnovers.
To put that line in context, his 2023-24 averages were 20.8 on 44.1/39.6/85.6 and 4.5 against 2.2, respectively. And that was arguably his most productive season to date at the time, as he set personal-bests in points, true shooting percentage (55.8), and box plus/minus (0.8), per Basketball-Reference.
The statistical spike wasn't small, in other words, so merely repeating it will be a massive challenge. Exceeding it would require scaling an even higher difficulty level. And, again, that's without even accounting for this challenging start to his season.
All of that said, there's a difference between difficult and impossible. This just might be doable.
Think about it. Last season was Herro's age-25 campaign. That's roughly where you'd expect an NBA star to start entering his prime. It was also the first in which the offensive system was built around him and not Jimmy Butler. So, perhaps Herro responded in the best kind of way to his ascendance up the food chain.
He should be more comfortable in this featured role now. He has also seen the benefits of performing at such a high level (even if they haven't included a lucrative contract extension yet). Moreover, he has seen that the strides he made last season still weren't enough to help him conquer a playoff defense. He could reasonably conclude he has to demand even more from himself.
While that doesn't guarantee he'll be as good (let alone better) than last season, his confidence that he can make it happen is still important. None of this will be easy, and he knows that. If he's really ready for the work and thinks he can conquer it, maybe he really is on the launching pad and headed toward yet another leap.