Herro keeps red-hot Heat rolling in season debut

MIAMI -- It took a little while, but Tyler Herro eventually got going in his season debut.

As a result, so did the Miami Heat.

Behind 24 points from Herro -- including a floater that put Miami ahead for good inside the final minute -- Monday night at Kaseya Center against the Dallas Mavericks, the Heat eventually emerged with a 106-102 victory, continuing the team's hot start and allowing everyone to celebrate the team's leading scorer returning from ankle surgery in September.

"It was a long nine, 10 weeks or so [that I was out], but it went by fast," Herro said. "[The team has] been having a lot of fun, and just to be able to go out there and compete with them tonight was great."

Herro had spent the past few weeks ramping himself back up into full basketball shape with a target of sometime at the end of this month -- two full months after the surgery -- in mind as a reasonable expectation for his return to game action. He said he and the team had this date circled for the past three weeks.

His return coming Monday -- with leading scorer Norman Powell (groin) sitting out and on the second night of a back-to-back after Sunday's win in Philadelphia -- was ideal for a Heat team looking to keep its early season momentum moving forward.

"It's amazing that he can come back and have that kind of rhythm, and that's only going to get better," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "When you face better defenses, you can see why we need that skill. You need as much skill and firepower as possible in this league.

"And it was just exciting to have him back."

The Heat needed every one of Herro's points, as Dallas -- which has now played in a league-leading 15th clutch game this season -- came back from trailing by as many as 13 points to tie the game in the fourth quarter behind 27 points from forward P.J. Washington.

But after Washington made a horrible inbounds pass that was swiped by Heat center Bam Adebayo with 48.2 seconds to go, Herro came down and made a high-arcing floater in the lane that put the Heat up 104-102.

And after both teams made a series of miscues -- including Washington missing a couple of 3-pointers inside the final 30 seconds -- Adebayo made a couple of free throws to ice away the win, the fifth in a row for Miami and the eighth in the Heat's past 10 games.

"I happened to be in the right position, get to my spot and make a floater," Herro said of his go-ahead bucket. "But Bam made a hell of a steal ... without Bam, I don't get to make that play."

Herro is coming off a career year last season for the Heat, in which he averaged 23.9 points on 47% shooting and made his first All-Star team.

But after the Heat were annihilated in four games in the first round of the playoffs by the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, Spoelstra went back to the drawing board and tore up the team's offensive system, bringing in former Memphis Grizzlies assistant Noah LaRoche as a consultant to employ a totally different system.

It's a unique system in the NBA, one that hardly uses pick-and-rolls and has had Miami playing at the league's fastest pace. In in, everyone must make ultra-quick decisions. And as Monday's game played out, Herro looked like someone who hadn't played in a couple of months and was getting himself up to speed.

"You see it out there, man," Adebayo said, when asked about Herro's fit in the scheme. "We got a lot of guys that's hard to guard off the catch.

"As you see, it's a fun offense to be part of. It's not a lot of pick-and-rolls, but it's sharing the game. ... Everyone feels involved, everyone gets a chance to be aggressive, and we're being successful off of it."

Things, though, started to click for Herro late in the second quarter, when he finally got a bucket in the paint to fall after missing his first four shots to open the game. And once Herro started making shots, he didn't stop.

He went on to make nine consecutive shots, and 12 of his final 14 attempts, almost exclusively on shots in the mid- and floater range.

The result was a gaudy-looking statline, even as he still has plenty of rust to knock off his game.

"it's not an adjustment for him in terms of how we play," Spoelstra said. "He's going to fit right in. He's going to amplify everything we're doing.

"I'm happy for him and it's good that we'll be able to build, we'll be able to build on this."