Herro accepts invite to represent the Heat in Three-Point Contest, but knee injury could change plan
It looks like Bam Adebayo won’t be the only player representing the Miami Heat at All-Star Weekend in a few days.
Heat guard Tyler Herro is among those who have received invites to take part in the ThreePoint Contest on Saturday, according to a league source. All-Star festivities this year are being held at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City.
Herro has accepted the invite and plans to participate as part of All-Star Saturday Night, which begins at 8 p.m. and will be televised on TNT.
It remains to be seen if Herro’s left knee contusion, which will force him to miss his second straight game on Wednesday against the Nets in Brooklyn, changes those plans. But the injury is not believed to be serious.
Herro would join Adebayo as the Heat’s representatives at All-Star Weekend. Adebayo was named as an Eastern Conference reserve for Sunday’s All-Star Game.
According to The Athletic, Tyrese Haliburton and Buddy Hield of the Indiana Pacers, Damian Lillard and Anfernee Simons of the Portland Trail Blazers, Lauri Markkanen of the Utah Jazz, Kevin Huerter of the Sacramento Kings and
Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics make up the rest of the eight-player field for this year’s ThreePoint Contest. The participants were announced Tuesday night.
The Heat has had plenty of past success in the Three-Point Contest, with Herro set to be the ninth different Heat player to participate in the shooting event.
Four Heat players have won the competition — Glen Rice in 1995, Jason Kapono in 2007, Daequan Cook in 2009 and
James Jones in 2011. No other NBA team has had four or more different players win the ThreePoint Contest.
Duncan Robinson was the last Heat player to take part in the ThreePoint Contest, when he was eliminated in the first round of the competition in 2020.
This would mark Herro’s first appearance on the All-Star Weekend stage. He was selected to take part in the Rising Stars Game as a rookie in 2020, but a foot injury kept him out of the game.
Herro, 23, is averaging 20.6 points, 5.7 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game in his fourth NBA season and his first as a full-time starter. He’s shooting a team-best 36.9 percent from three-point range on a team-high 8.1 attempts per game.
Among the 13 players who entered Tuesday averaging eight or more three-point attempts per game, Herro is ranked eighth in three-point percentage.
The Heat will be represented in the shooting contest despite entering Tuesday with the NBA’s third-worst team threepoint percentage at 33.5 percent.
THIS AND THAT
The Heat will remain
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without Herro, Nikola Jovic (lower back stress reaction), Kyle Lowry
(left knee soreness), Victor Oladipo (right ankle sprain) and Omer Yurtseven (left ankle surgery) for Wednesday’s game.
But the good news is Robinson traveled with the Heat to Brooklyn and has been upgraded to questionable for Wednesday. He has missed the past 20 games after undergoing finger surgery on Jan. 4.
On facing the newlook
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Nets before heading into the All-Star break, Adebayo said: “This league changes every year, every trade deadline, every summer. So you just got to constantly watch basketball and just see how teams work. I think they’ve been together for a week now since last Thursday. You got to get used to how they play now. It’s a whole different team, it’s a whole different style of play for them. You got to understand what the concept is and I
feel like once you start seeing that, you can figure out a team.”
The Nets traded Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns and Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks earlier this month. Brooklyn acquired Dorian FinneySmith and Spencer Dinwiddie from Dallas, and Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson from Phoenix in those deals.