Jimmy Butler Controversy Still Haunts Heat as Tyler Herro & Erik Spoelstra Make Feelings Clear After Playoff Exit

This season isn’t the one that the Miami Heat and their fans would like to remember for long. The drama in South Florida started with the Jimmy Butler saga that loomed over the team for much of the first half of the season. Then the Heat had to navigate through a rough patch to secure a place in this season’s playoffs. However, happiness did not last much longer as Tyler Herro and Co. have been swept in humiliating fashion by the Cleveland Cavaliers. However, there were a few bright spots for Miami this season, with one of them being Tyler Herro’s All-Star season. The 25-year-old point guard averaged 23.9 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 5.5 assists in the regular season.

With Jimmy Butler taking the back seat in the offense and eventually heading to San Francisco, Herro needed to step up for Miami, and he did. By doing so, he even made his very first All-Star appearance. However, with expectations higher than ever before heading into the postseason, Herro succumbed to the pressure. The Miami superstar failed to carry his regular-season form in the playoffs against Cleveland. His average dropped to 17.8 points, along with 3.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists against the Cavs. To make things worse, after game three in the playoffs, a quote from Tyler Herro before the game to The Athletic’s Jared Weiss gained a lot of traction, but for the wrong reasons.

According to the interview, Herro admitted that he required Butler to win. “Obviously, I know I need Jimmy to win,” Herro stated. “If we had Jimmy right now, I feel like it’d be a completely different situation. We probably wouldn’t even be the eighth seed.” This statement raised a lot of eyebrows from fans and media alike. Moreover, it left everyone scratching their head as to why Herro would make such an admission. However, the Miami guard has now cleared the air around the statement. The 25-year-old posted two stories from his second Instagram account, suggesting his words were taken out of context and ripping apart the reporter.

“Dude asked me a question in the timeframe of Jan-Feb when the ‘Jimmy Saga’ was happening. I said I had came into the season thinking I was playing off of Jimmy, to him getting trading, and I had to switch my mindset from needing Jimmy to me being the lead guy, and I spoke about the things I learned from JB. Never said I need anyone to win games. Y’all trippin n buddy from The Athletic who wrote the article is a goofy.” Herro wrote in his story. “I usually don’t clear (expletive) up either, but I don’t like dude from The Athletic.” He concluded.

Herro made it clear that he talked about the transition of him playing off Butler to becoming the main man after his departure. Instead of Weiss’s interpretation of the words. While Tyler Herro cleared the confusion around his statement, Miami’s head coach, Erik Spoelstra, made his feelings about the brutal end to their campaign known to the fans.

Erik Spoelstra expresses his feelings after a humiliating playoff exit

The Miami Heat’s season was not supposed to end like this. Erik Spoelstra has been at the helm for the longest. Until now, no one could ever accuse his Miami team of quitting the game halfway through it. But when former NBA star and TNT broadcaster Charles Barkley accused his team of giving up mid-game, it did not seem that far-fetched. That’s because the Heat’s season ended with them being on the wrong side of a historic playoff game. The Cleveland Cavaliers blew out Miami, 138-83, in their own backyard. This 55-point defeat is the largest margin for a postseason game in the history of the league.

Of course, this embarrassed the two-time NBA championship-winning head coach, Erik Spoelstra. After the disappointing loss, he expressed his feelings about the exit. “We deserved the criticism. We deserved the embarrassment of the last two games. It’s not what our organization is about. We felt [play-in wins] would lead to a lot more. That was irrational on our part,” Spoelstra stated. He emphasized the fact that he and his players “deserved” the embarrassment. This season has been terrible for the 54-year-old Miami coach. Everything started going south with Jimmy Butler’s departure from South Florida. After which the team lost 17 of their next 21 games!

If that wasn’t bad enough, they ended the season with a 37-45 record, which is the tied-worst for any Erik Spoelstra-coached team. Then they managed to make it to the playoffs, hugely leaning on their two All-Star players, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro. Only to be humiliated even more, as the Cavaliers made light work of their team, sweeping them 4-0. Nonetheless, the misery has come to an end for both Erik Spoelstra and the Heat, they will have the entire off-season to plot their moves for the next season and hopefully come back much stronger.