Tyler Herro perfectly sums up Heat’s character amid challenges

The Miami Heat have been a perennial playoff team under the watchful eye of head coach Erik Spoelstra; they’ve only missed the playoffs thrice and finished with a losing record twice prior to the 2024-25 season. But this campaign has presented a plethora of challenges for the Heat. They had to navigate the complicated Jimmy Butler drama and even suffered a brutal losing streak towards the end of the season, forcing them to finish the season with a 37-45 record, requiring them to go through the play-in tournament if they were to make the playoffs.

Being the 10-seed is never easy, as they will have to win two single-elimination games on the road just to earn the right to be the eighth-seed. But the Heat have mostly righted the ship over the past few weeks, and on Wednesday, they lived to survive another day after beating the Chicago Bulls in convincing fashion, 109-90, to set up a do-or-die contest against the Atlanta Hawks on Friday for the right to play the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Spoelstra has always put the Heat in a position to punch above their weight class, and even with the departure of Butler, Tyler Herro knows that the team’s culture allows them to remain competitive even when circumstances are somewhat dire.

“[We’re] super resilient. We have a bunch of guys who come in everyday, put their hard hats on and they work. The season hasn’t exactly been how we wanted it to but we come in, we work, we continue to get better everyday. We got a lot of young guys who have a lot of promise and a lot to look forward to,” Herro told ESPN’s Cassidy Hubbarth following the Heat’s win.