The Miami Heat return home to square off with the Dallas Mavericks on the second night of a back-to-back inside Kaseya Center at 7:30 p.m. EST.
Winners of four-straight, Miami (11-6) is five games above .500 for the first time since 2023-24. The Heat owns the league’s 12th-best offense, fourth-best defense, 10th-best effective field goal percentage and 11th-best true-shooting percentage.
And they get Tyler Herro back!
The one-time All-Star, coming off a career season, will likely need some time to acclimate after foot surgery. But Herro should be additive to an already potent offense that’s been held down by Norman Powell and Jaime Jaquez Jr.
Conversely, the Mavericks, spearheaded by No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg, are a mess, owning the league’s worst offense with the 8th-worst NET Rating. They have looked a lot more functional with Brandon Williams running the show, however. Though that was a low bar.
What are you looking forward to most with Monday’s game?!
Injury Report (at the time of this publishing):
Miami Heat:
NOT YET SUBMITTED.
Dallas Mavericks:
- Anthony Davis (calf) — DOUBTFUL
- Dante Exum (knee) — OUT
- Kyrie Irving (knee) — OUT
- Dereck Lively (foot) — OUT
- Ryan Nembhard (knee) — QUESTIONABLE
- Brandon Williams (Back) — QUESTIONABLE
Projected Starting 5 (subject to change):
Miami Heat:
- Davion Mitchell, G
- Tyler Herro
- Norman Powell, G
- Bam Adebayo, F/C
- Kel’el Ware, C
Dallas Mavericks:
- Brandon Williams, G (if healthy)
- Max Christie, G
- Cooper Flagg, F
- P.J. Washington, F
- Daniel Gafford, C
Broadcast Info:
- Tipoff: 7:30 PM EST
- TV: FanDuel Sports Network Sun (Eric Reid & John Crotty)
- Radio: AM 560 Sports WQAM & The HEAT Radio Network (Jason Jackson)
- Spanish Radio: WAQI 710 AM & The HEAT Spanish Radio Network (José Pañeda)
Come back to Hot Hot Hoops at game time to join our GameThread and chat about the game live with other Heat fans!
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It’s great that we are 11-6. A start like that gives us some time to figure things out. All over the league there are guys missing games, almost seems like an epidemic. But, we are in a good spot for now. Let the quality of play be the determining factor as Spo has more to work with than he had and he will give us our best chance to win. We have no control anyway so let’s sit back and see how things pan out. Go Heat, I do think we can beat Dallas although it’s not going to be an easy win like Chicago.
Yeah, it seems we can’t get fully healed yet. Not that we’ll always be 100% healthy, but also would like to see a healthy team get like 10-15 games together
ware playing with emotion is about as close a player can be to wemby
It’s as if a light switch in his head suddenly was turned on about 3 or 4 games ago. He has been absolute dynamite, dominating.
It took a fire in his ass to turn the light switch on in his head. Whatever works. Thank Spo, UD and Zo for that.
So the easy defensive target (Tyler) is back.
The reason our defense was so good without him is because they were no weak defenders to pick on.
Now teams will have a consistent weak link to target during games and especially during 4th quarters.
I Hope Tyler had an opportunity to work on his defense during his recovery, if not we could see a return to the dreaded 4th quarter collapses of last season when teams would relentlessly pick on Tyler’s poor defense.
And especially now with no Norm (for likely weeks) to help pick up the 4th quarter scoring slack.
Cross fingers this doesn’t happen because as a Heat fan I don’t want us to lose this momentum but I’m also realistic about Tyler’s defensive shortcomings.
agree team hasnt looked this good since the wade days.if norm is out i guess u can put herro in but we will be a diff team with him in there.i would just keep doing what were doing but injuries have changed that.one way players cause problems .hopefully he has watched pelle guard the hell out of players,gotta be a little more physical tyler.anyway around playoff time herro will be injured or ineffective
I didn’t see any timeline about how long Powell will be out. Did you read that somewhere or just speculating? Last time, he came back in the second half. Hopefully he’ll be back soon. As for Herro, I don’t imagine that his defense has improved much or that he had time to work on it with the ankle surgery. I do think this run and gun style will be a good fit for him. We’ll know soon enough. I just don’t see any major changes because this has been a success by committee effort. The team now has enough athletic defenders that can cover most of his shortcomings.
when u have to cover for ty whos guarding your guy u left and so on .it messes up the d rotation and usually ends up for an open 3 for opponent.the only current blow by victim was fonzi to a much lesser degree than herro all others non candidates for blow bys.give me a no blow by team any day of the week .unless theres a luka type player getting blown by
Like my handle indicates, I like to deal with reality. Herro is going to play no matter what any of us feel. With Ware as an anchor and Bam and others roaming the perimeter, I believe we’ll be fine.
It doesn’t make sense to start Herro right off the bat. He should be given a couple of games, at least, to adjust to the Heat’s new faster style of play. If Wiggins is back, I would start Pelle at SG and bring Herro off the bench.
If both Wiggins and Powell are not available, starting unit can be Mitchell, Larsson, Fontecchio, Bam and Ware with Dru, Herro, Jaquez, Johnson and Ware/Bam splitting time with second unit.
Maybe, but with Powell out, I suspect they’ll throw Herro right into the fire.
Powell is out tonight. May be the perfect opportunity to have Herro in.
Like we said, we’re going to need everyone over the 82 game schedule. Perfect time to get Norm some rest for his injury.
Welcome back, Tyler.
Dallas, as it is, is a bad team. They don’t have a decent point guard, so ball pressure should be the right strategy to beat them.