Heat opens important trip with win over Rockets
HOUSTON
The Miami Heat’s day started with news of Tyler Herro’s long-awaited return and ended with an important win.
Just 24 hours after falling to the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday in Miami for one of the most painful losses of its season, the Heat bounced back to earn a much-needed 119-104 win over the Houston Rockets at Toyota Center on Friday night to close a challenging backto-back set and open a pivotal threegame trip.
The Heat, which is fighting to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament, cruised to Friday’s double-digit win behind a big 56-34 edge in paint points.
The Heat entered halftime ahead by five and extended its lead to as many as 18 points in the second half.
The Rockets made a late push in hopes of getting back into the game, pulling within six points with 8:01 left in the fourth quarter.
But the Heat ended the Rockets’ momentum right there, scoring 12 unanswered points to push its lead up to 18 with 4:23 to play and seal the victory.
In his return from injury, Herro totaled 17 points, five rebounds and six assists in 25 minutes. He scored nine points in the fourth quarter.
Jimmy Butler finished with a teamhigh 22 points for the Heat with the help of 8-of-8 shooting from the foul line. But he was able to sit out the entire fourth quarter because of the lopsided score.
Bam Adebayo added 18 points, 12 rebounds and six assists for the Heat.
Five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Rockets on Friday:
Even after the win in Houston, the Heat remains in seventh place in the Eastern Conference.
The battle for sixth place in the East to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament is coming down to the final days of the regular season.
With the Heat and Pacers both winning on Friday, the seventh-place Heat
(43-34) remained a halfgame behind the sixthplace Pacers (44-34). But both teams are even in the loss column, setting up for Sunday’s critical matchup between the Heat and Pacers in Indianapolis.
The eighth-place Philadelphia 76ers are also looming. The 76ers (42-35), which were idle on Friday, stand one game behind the No. 7 Heat and 1.5 games behind the No. 6 Pacers. The 76ers are also one game behind both the Heat and Pacers in the loss column.
The Pacers, Heat and 76ers are battling for the sixth spot in the East, with the top-six seeds in each conference going straight to the playoffs without needing to take part in the NBA’s play-in tournament.
The Heat’s defense turned it up in the second half on the way to the double-digit win.
After allowing the Rockets to total 59 first-half points, the Heat limited the Rockets to 45 points in the second half.
The Heat’s defense was especially dominant in the fourth quarter, holding the Rockets to 21 points in the period.
This is just the continuation of the Heat’s midseason defensive surge, as it holds the NBA’s secondbest defensive rating since the start of February.
That has pushed the
Heat into the NBA’s top five in defensive rating for the season after standing at 13th-ranked in this category on Jan. 29.
The Heat got Herro back from injury.
After missing 20 straight games because of a foot injury diagnosed as right foot medial tendinitis, Herro made his return in Friday’s win over the Rockets.
Herro, who played in his first game since Feb. 23, finished his return with 17 points, five rebounds and six assists in 25 minutes.
Herro entered for his first action in more than a month with 3:42 left in Friday’s first quarter. He then scored his first points a few minutes later on a 13-foot pull-up during an impressive 11-minute stint that included six points and four assists.
Herro started in his first 36 appearances of the season prior to the injury, but he played off the bench in his first game back on Friday. It marked Herro’s first time playing off the bench since the 2022 playoffs — the same season that he was named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year.
Herro had started 103 straight regular-season games since then before playing as a reserve on Friday. Will Herro continue to play off the bench moving forward or was this a one-game reserve stint as a way of easing him back into the mix? That remains to be seen.
“We want to get him out here, and that’s the most important thing, and make sure that whatever minutes he gets tonight that he feels fine and able to play the next game,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said ahead of Herro’s return.
With Herro playing off the bench, the Heat continued to use its new go-to starting lineup.
The Heat opened Friday’s game with a lineup of Terry Rozier, Duncan Robinson, Jimmy Butler, Nikola Jovic and Bam Adebayo.
It marked the 13th game that this group has started, with all of those starts coming during Herro’s 20-game absence. No Heat lineup has started more games together this season than this one.
But the results continue to be underwhelming, as this lineup holds a negative net rating. Entering Friday, opponents outscored the Heat by 5.3 points per 100 possessions in the 156 minutes the Rozier-Robinson-Butler-Jovic-Adebayo combination had played together this season.
On Friday, the Heat’s starting lineup was outscored 18-13 in the first
6:41 of the game before Miami made its first substitution.
But Friday’s second half went well for this lineup, as the Heat started the third quarter on a 19-13 run before turning to its bench.
The Heat leaned on its depth on the second night of a challenging back-to-back, using a 10-man rotation.
With Herro back in the mix, he didn’t replace anybody in the Heat’s usual nine-man rotation. Instead, the Heat just added Herro to make it a 10-man rotation..