The why and the what hardly were the most compelling issues when it came to the Miami Heat’s decision with Tyler Herro.
Why an extension?
Because you don’t develop talent and let it walk. Sometimes that leads to mistakes, but if your infrastructure is built on development then you assuredly see it through beyond a rookie-scale contract.
What was the reason for $130 million over four seasons?
Basically the going rate, an annual figure commensurate with the expected contribution as a percentage of the overall salary cap.
But it is the when that created the pause.
The timing stood from the beginning of the process as the factor most in question.
With Herro extended, he basically is off the table for a trade this season, a “poison pill” restriction in place that means he only can be sent out for pennies on the dollar for any player acquired. And in a salary-cap league, such math does not work.
But there also were factors in play that meant no matter when Herro was re-signed (and he was going to be re-signed, no matter the timing) there would be a trade restriction.
For example, if the Heat chose to keep this season’s trade options open with Herro and re-signed him in July as a restricted free agent, he then would have become a base-year-compensation contract. Moving past the minutiae, that would have meant agreeing with Herro on July 1, 2023 would have put Herro off-limits for a trade until Jan. 15, 2024.
That essentially is the same length of time that Herro currently is off the trade market.
Taken further, had Herro gone out into restricted free agency and taken an offer sheet from another team next July, he then could not have been traded for a calendar year without his consent.
In other words, the mechanisms in the collective-bargaining agreement meant there would have been a period when Herro would have been out of play on the trade market, regardless of when an agreement was reached.
The question now is whether the Heat chose the wrong timing, particularly with a win-now roster that features 36-year-old Kyle Lowry and 33-year-old Jimmy Butler.
The timing of a Herro trade blackout for this season makes it less likely that the Heat can utilize Duncan Robinson’s salary in a significant trade, now without a significant sweetener (in Herro) to attach.
About the only assets of note at the moment to pair with Robinson’s contract would be the Heat’s limited supply of upcoming first-round picks.
By contrast, Herro’s elevated salary that kicks in on July 1, 2023 combined with what Robinson will be due then would put the Heat in position to combine those two contracts for a max-level player in a 2023 offseason trade.
For now, the front office will have to placate Lowry and Butler with a stance that taking one salary approach with P.J. Tucker and a seemingly opposite salary approach with Herro are unrelated, that even with Herro’s extension, the team remains free of the hard cap that would have come with reupping Tucker at the asking price he instead received from the Philadelphia 76ers.
Still, the Herro agreement very much has the look of a team prioritizing the future, now with Herro and Bam Adebayo locked into long-term deals.
And there is something to be said about protecting a future, with any Heat hopes for Kevin Durant ending this summer with the Heat’s refusal to include Adebayo in a potential trade.
Yet in reupping with Butler in the 2021 offseason, and in signing Lowry in that same timeframe, it seemingly was about a franchise living in the moment, especially with 33-year-old Dewayne Dedmon and 30-year-old Victor Oladipo re-signed this summer.
By the time Herro reaches his peak, Lowry likely will be gone from the Heat, and possibly from the league, while the years of wear on Butler could leave him diminished.
And at the moment, with Herro off the trade market, it would appear unlikely that the cavalry is coming in relief this season.
As for those Herro trade rumors that had the Heat in play for bigger things this summer?
To be continued ... but not until next summer.
