The Tyler Herro-Bam Adebayo beef had been brewing for some time.
The two former Miami Heat teammates had a solid relationship before things began to fall apart over the past year, as the team took a different offensive direction, according to a new report from ESPN, culminating in Friday’s fight at a court in Las Vegas in which Adebayo reportedly punched Herro.
“Honestly, I’m just trying to move past all of it,” Herro, who was dealt to the Bucks in the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade, told ESPN. “I’m focused on Milwaukee and building something special. They obviously just traded the greatest player in their history, so we want to come in and help continue what they’ve been doing.”
Adebayo reportedly confronted Herro over critical comments made on social media after the Heat-Bucks trade.
Adebayo then “took exception” to Herro’s verbal response and struck Herro near his chin, ESPN reported. Herro, who was not knocked to the ground, “was restrained by others in the gym from responding physically.”
Herro and Adebayo began to grow apart over the past year as Herro played in just 33 games last season due to various injuries, and even when he did play, he struggled to adjust to changes made by coach Erik Spoelstra.
It became clear that the offense would revolve around Adebayo as their primary scorer rather than a pick-and-roll-heavy approach from years past.
The Heat ran just 5.3 pick-and-roll ball-handler possessions per game and just 5.6 percent of the time, by far the least frequent in the NBA, with the Spurs coming in second at 12.2 percent of their plays.
This is a massive change from the season prior, when the Heat ran pick-and-roll on 16.2 percent of their plays, middle of the pack in the NBA.
Miami ran the pick and roll less than any NBA team since at least 2015, when the data began being tracked by the league.
When Herro returned to the offense from injury to make his season debut on Nov. 24, Adebayo made some interesting comments about their star guard’s return to an offense that had moved past his style.
“As you see, it’s a fun offense to be a part of,” Adebayo said. “It’s not a lot of pick-and-rolls to be a part of, but we’re sharing the game. You like those types of games where everybody feels involved, and everybody gets a chance to be aggressive. Put pressure on the rim and we’re being successful off of it.”
Herro said he’s ready to prove people wrong; perhaps Adebayo is one of them.
“I’m ready to come home and not prove everyone wrong,” he said, “but just be able to represent the city and the state because I wanted to do that coming out of school as well.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
