Less than a week after Miami Heat center and team captain, Bam Adebayo, allegedly struck former Heat guard Tyler Herro at a Las Vegas hotel, the league announced Thursday that neither player will be punished.
“After discussing with the players involved and the NBPA, everyone would prefer to move on from this unfortunate circumstance, and no further action will be taken by the league,” a league spokesperson told ESPN’s Shams Charania.
Adebayo’s dust-up with Herro occurred following multiple comments made over social media critiquing his play. Herro allegedly made those comments to an anonymous user via Instagram DM’s with a burner account.
Herro was met with real-world consequences as a result.
Some of the comments Herro allegedly made included, “You should get paid 60 million to be a top-tier defender on some nights?” “If I’m healthy I’m the one who needs help?” “I need help. Not the other guy”, etc.
This comes after years of Adebayo publicly backing Herro, who was subject to plenty of trade rumors and criticism made because the former Heat guard, frankly, is a flawed player. Adebayo always had Herro’s back and shot down any negative talk toward the 26-year-old, as did Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra and his teammates in past seasons.
This precedent follows the NBA’s decision to not suspend Draymond Green for punching then-teammate Jordan Poole in 2022. The NBA also didn’t suspend Bobby Portis, who’s now on the Heat, for punching teammate Nikola Mirotic when both were in Chicago in 2017 — the Bulls did, however, for seven games.
There’s currently no word on whether the Heat will take action internally or not.
The largest fine an NBA team can give its own players is $50K per infraction, per the CBA.
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The league felt Bam had already suffered enough having to cover for Herro’s defensive deficiencies for 7 years.
Best possible outcome. The winner is the league for such matured decision void of sentiment.
Seems like the situation was a bit overstated