Miami Heat 2022-23 preview: How much does Kyle Lowry have left? Can Tyler Herro stay on floor in crunch time?

October 10, 2022October 10, 2022 Admin

The Miami Heat finished one win from reaching the NBA Finals last season, falling 100-96 to the Celtics in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. Tyler Herro couldn’t go. Kyle Lowry wasn’t healthy. The Heat have every reason to believe they are a championship contender against this season, even with the loss of PJ Tucker, who wasn’t directly replaced. Below is a glance at Miami’s roster before we get to three big storylines to watch as the season progresses.

Key Addition: Nikola Jovic (27th overall pick)
Key Losses: PJ Tucker, Markieff Morris

Roster

Top of the Key: The real Kyle Lowry

Set to turn 37 before the start of the playoffs, who, at this point, is the real Kyle Lowry? Is it the guy who shot 37 percent from 3 and finished top eight among all guards in assists, potential assists and assist points created per game last regular season, or the guy who averaged under eight points per game on 24 percent 3-point shooting in the playoffs?

Lowry’s injured hamstring clearly hampered him in the playoffs. He hasn’t declined that much. But whether he can still be the old Kyle Lowry, rather than just the old one, is the biggest swing factor in Miami’s championship formula. Lowry fits so much with the Heat culture we’re all pretty tired of hearing about. He’s tough. Smart. He impacts winning in tangible and intangible ways.

Lowry is in Miami to take playmaking burden off the shoulders of Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. He’s so vital because of the threat he poses as a pull-up 3-point shooter off pick-and-roll, which is not an element Butler brings to the table. Lowry pushes the pace and remains a physical defender that, unlike Tyler Herro and to a lesser degree Gabe Vincent, can’t be targeted in a playoff series. That is what kept him on the floor for crucial postseason minutes last season even when he was hardly bringing anything offensively. Let’s see what Lowry has left in the tank. It will tell us a lot about how far Miami can go.

Next up: Herro ball

Herro was worthy of an early rookie extension, but $130 million over four years? Reasonable minds can disagree on that level of commitment to a guy whose own organization might not even be convinced he’s a starter.

Miami missed Herro’s shot creation in the latter half of its conference finals loss to Boston. He tried to go in Game 7 but wasn’t healthy enough and played just seven minutes, taking a bagel in the scoring column. Had Herro been healthy, it would’ve been interesting whether Erik Spoelstra would’ve closed with him or stayed with sounder defensive options.

This is the dilemma with Herro, who wants to be a starter and regards himself among the most elite young players in the game: He can be a lights-out scorer/shot creator but he’s a weak defensive link. Think Jordan Poole or Clarkson. Pat Riley said it: “The next step for [Herro] … if you want to win a championship and you want to be a starter, you have to become a two-way player.”

So, can Herro, who looks like he’s put on more muscle in the offseason, provide enough defense to open his scoring gates in crunch time? The Heat, who have long lacked a second top-shelf scorer to pair with Butler, sure hope so, because if the Lowry regression is real and not just a health-based deception, Herro becomes Miami’s most viable late-game pick-and-roll initiator given Butler’s noted inability to threaten as a pull-up 3-point shooter.

One more thing: Miami’s next hidden gem

Miami’s success in turning undrafted players into millionaires is well chronicled. Duncan Robinson wasn’t drafted and he signed a $90 million deal two summers ago. Caleb Martin just signed a three-year, $20 million deal. Max Strus and Gabe Vincent, both also undrafted, are on their way to life-changing money next summer as free agents.

Omer Yurtseven could be the next hidden gem to be uncovered in Miami. Yurtseven, undrafted in 2020, was forced into Miami’s rotation last season when Bam Adebayo missed six weeks from December through mid-January, and he was something of a revelation over that run. Yurtseven made his first career start the day after Christmas, bagging 16 points and 15 rebounds.

He went on to put up 22 points and 16 rebounds against the Kings, and 22 and 11 against Joel Embiid and the Sixers. For the month of January, Yurtseven tallied eight double-doubles and averaged 10.9 points and 9.9 rebounds. He was a rebounding machine, to be frank, pulling down 30.1 percent of opponents’ misses during his court time (98th percentile among bigs, per CTG), and 12.8 percent of his own team’s misses on the offensive glass (88th percentile).

This season, with the departure of PJ Tucker at the four spot, I expect to see Yurtseven get minutes next to Adebayo in two-big lineups, and by season’s end I think he will have entrenched himself as the team’s backup center. The guy can play.