Tyler Herro is in the middle of his best career season, but he will probably want to omit Wednesday night’s game from his highlight reel.
The Miami Heat star Herro committed an absurdly boneheaded move late in his team’s matchup against the Chicago Bulls. With Chicago leading 114-106 with under a minute left in the fourth quarter, Herro sank a corner three-pointer to trim the lead to five. Herro then came up with a big steal on the other end and had a wide-open lane to the basket the other way. But instead of taking it all the way for the easy, uncontested two, Herro did something unbelievable — he stopped short and fired away on a three-pointer.
The ill-advised shot rimmed out, and the live-ball rebound went to the Bulls. As a result, Chicago took advantage of a scrambling Heat defense and managed to get a wide-open three-point look for Matas Buzelis, which he sank to push the lead to eight again and effectively ice the game. The Bulls ultimately won 119-111.
Here is the video of Herro’s mind-blowing blunder.
The decision by Herro was just as dumb strategically as it seemed on the surface. He gave up a near-100-percent chance at two points for roughly a 40-45 percent chance at three points. To make matters worse, the Heat did not even need a three at the time. A layup there would have made it a one-possession game with around 40 seconds left. The Bulls probably would have had to burn a timeout, and then Miami simply could have played out the possession defensively and gotten the ball back with 15-20 seconds left (plus a timeout of their own still left to work with).
Herro, 25, was a first-time All-Star this year and holds phenomenal averages of 23.8 points and 5.5 assists per game (both career highs). But that farcical blunder might have been worse than last month when another NBA All-Star seemingly forgot the score at the end of a game.
