All-Star guard Tyler Herro will not travel with the Miami Heat for their five-game West Coast road trip due to a right rib contusion, the team announced Sunday ahead of Monday’s MLK Day clash against the Golden State Warriors.
According to Heat beat writer Ira Winderman, Herro will stay back in Miami and undergo an MRI on his ribs.
The five-game road trip also includes games against the Sacramento Kings, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns within the span of a week. The proximity of five games in seven days likely suggests that Herro will be unable to join his teammates even if the MRI on his rib contusion doesn’t indicate a serious injury.
Tyler Herro Injury News
The oft-injured Herro has missed 31 of the Heat’s first 42 games thus far, including the first 17 due to the ankle surgery he underwent in the offseason. Herro has since missed another 14 games due to a toe contusion, while also sitting out back-to-backs.
While Herro had a career year in 2024-25, making his first All-Star team for averaging 23.9 points and 5.5 assists, he routinely missed time with injuries through the first five seasons of his career. In 2023-24, he missed 40 regular-season games with recurring knee and foot injuries, a year after skipping the Heat’s run to the 2023 NBA Finals after breaking his right hand. In the lead-up to the 2023 playoffs, he also missed 18 consecutive games with a shoulder injury.
All in all, Hero has missed a noteworthy 135 regular-season games and another 25 postseason games since entering the league in 2019-20.
Heat Upset the Thunder
Herro likely sustained his latest rib injury during last Thursday’s 119-114 loss to the Boston Celtics, following which he sat out Sunday’s win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Heat responded in a big way without Herro, as they upset the reigning NBA champions, 122-120, in a nail-biting game that went down to the wire.
Bam Adebayo (30 points, 12 rebounds) led the way, while Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins and Pelle Larsson combined for 50 points in the upset victory.
Adebayo, who’s faced a lot of criticism for being unable to fit into the Heat’s new pace-and-space system, called out his detractors after Sunday’s win.
“I don’t care about what anybody says about me offensively,” Adebayo said.
“They’re gonna move the goal posts for me every night. I don’t shoot enough, I’m not being aggressive, shooting too much, it’s the wrong shot diet. So my teammates, my coaching staff, they know what I’m capable of. Obviously, every shot that I take, I work on all the time, and Spo [Spoelstra] knows that. Spo sees it.”
The Heat (22-20) are heavy -6.5-point underdogs entering Monday’s MLK Day clash against the red-hot Golden State Warriors (24-19), who’ve won six of their last eight games, including three in a row. The onus will once again be on Adebayo and Powell to lead the way in the absence of Herro, who averaged 21.9 points before his injury.
Discussion about this post