Tyler Herro remains defiant in the face of defeat with Heat staring at sweep: "Not going down 4-0"
On Saturday night, Tyler Herro and the Miami Heat fell 0-3 in their first-round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers. This is the dreaded hole that no NBA team has ever gotten out of in history of the playoffs.
Still, Herro refuses to wave the flag. At the very least, the first-time All-Star is adamant that the Heat won't be swept by the Cavs:
"We just gotta keep playing," Herro said during his post-game interview. "That's what we're paid to do, and that's who we are as an organization. We want to compete, and we're not going down 4-0."
Herro, who is playing in his sixth year with the Heat, also shared some insight on how he continued to motivate his teammates:
"I told the guys in the locker room, we wanted to be here. We're the 10th seed, we had two games to win on the road," Herro said. "We could've lost one of those games, but we wanted this. We wanted to be in the playoffs."
If anything, Herro has led by example in the series thus far. Against Cleveland, he has averaged 22.3 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 3.3 assists per game. His highest scoring output came on Game 2, when he went off for 33 points on 14-for-24 shooting.
Try as Herro might, there was no stopping the fearsome Cavaliers offense, which has put up a field goal percentage better than 47% in all three games of the series. On Saturday, Cleveland upped the intensity on defense as well; the 124-87 outcome of the game, in fact, is the worst playoff loss in the history of the Heat franchise.
Miami Heat HC on Tyler Herro's performance in Game 3: "They took him out of his normal stuff"
As good as Herro played in Game 2, he mustered just 13 points on 5-for-13 shooting in Game 3. According to Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra, that relatively tame performance was caused by the Cavaliers' adjustments on the defensive end:
“We rightly so have become reliant on Tyler creating a lot of offense for us,” Spoelstra said after the game. “And they kind of took him out of his normal stuff with the face-guarding and denying, and that led to some of the discouragement.”
On Monday, Herro will have to pull out all the stops as the Heat face a do-or-die Game 4.