An update on Heat’s Lowry, a change for Herro and more great feats for Strus, Vincent

Heat point guard Kyle Lowry - who missed the final two games of the Eastern Conference semifinals and six games overall this postseason because of a hamstring injury - did not practice on Sunday, leaving his status for the start of the next round very much in doubt.

Lowry attended practice and did “some things on the side,” Erik Spoelstra said.

The coach added that he had no update on Lowry’s status. But he seems unlikely to play in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday night at FTX Arena, barring a dramatic change. The Heat is sensitive to not wanting his injury to be re-aggravated.

The Heat is 6-0 when Lowry has been sidelined this postseason. Gabe Vincent has started all of those games in his place.

MORE STEPS FOR STRUS, VINCENT

One of the joys for the Heat is watching their young players expand their games.

Max Strus didn’t produce a single double digit rebounding game in 119 NBA games before grabbing 10 in Game 5 against the 76ers and 11 in Game 6. The caveat is that he played limited minutes in many of those 119 games.

But in 66 career games at DePaul, he had only four double-digit rebounding games, with a career-high of 13 against Illinois-Chicago.

Last week, Heat president Pat Riley challenged Strus to get 10 rebounds in a game. “Who I was guarding didn’t really crash the offensive glass,” Strus said. “Bam [Adebayo] was taking care of [Joel] Embiid.

“Somebody else had to go there and box out. A lot of balls happened to bounce my way. I tend to think I’m a good rebounder.”

And then there’s his defense.

Among shooting guards who have defended at least 100 shots this postseason, Strus has allowed the third-lowest field goal percentage against at 42.6. Those same players have shot 46.3 percent overall, by comparison.

As perspective, NBA Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart entered Sunday’s Game 7 against Milwaukee having allowed the player he’s guarding to shoot 42.3 percent, barely behind what Strus is permitting.

“I take defense personally because people don’t think I can guard anybody and I think I’ve been showing that’s not true,” Strus said.

Strus and Vincent both have 10 steals in postseason, the same amount as Smart (entering Sunday) and one fewer than Draymond Green, the 2017 Defensive Player of the Year.

Meanwhile, Vincent now leads all NBA guards in defensive field goal percentage permitted during these playoffs. Players he’s guarding are shooting 34.6 percent (27 for 78).

Spoelstra, after Game 6, took time to offer a testimonial to the development of both players.

“People were talking about was Gabe’s shooting percentage,” Spoelstra said, referencing last season, when a cumbersome knee brace - which he shed earlier this season - impacted his three-point accuracy. “Things that just didn’t resonate with me. I saw a player that was changing a position, which is really tough to do. From being a gunslinger two-guard playing off screens and off the ball to somebody that we were going to develop into a combo guard, backup point guard and defensive irritant.

“He never was that before. But he embraced it. He poured everything into it and he’s just made a lot of progress. I think it set him up for this summer. They both had outstanding summers. Gabe with the Nigerian national team, where he can say for one time against the USA team that he was the best player on the floor.

“Then Max was sensational during our summer league this year. So they both came into training camp with a lot of confidence and also a lot of experience. They both played over 50 games and over 1,000 minutes last year. They’re not minutes for young players of just go out there and play. There was like crazy expectations, veterans yelling at you if you’re not doing what you want to do. You got to learn by fire and they both did.”

After his double-doubles in Game 5 and 6 against Philadelphia, Strus said he has “the belief back in myself. Games 3 and 4, I was second guessing a lot of the things I was doing.”

HERRO STUDYING

Heat guard Tyler Herro said he has been studying video of how he responded when Philadelphia frequently pressed him full-court, blitzed him on the pick-and-roll and tried in general to get the ball out of his hands.

Herro has analyzed how “the Sixers were guarding me and [I’m] trying to figure out different ways I can be effective, how to counter that and things I can go to so they can’t take everything away.”

Herro has averaged 12.5 field goal attempts per game in postseason, compared with 17 in the regular season.

Herro has analyzed “really good guards around the league that get blitzed on a regular basis. I try to just watch them and the reads that they make. Eventually you’ll get better at it at some point.”

Spoelstra said Herro “has been specifically schemed. That’s a great sign of respect.”

SPOELSTRA STUFF

Spoelstra said he planned to watch Game 7 of the Bucks-Celtics series alone. “My boys watched about 11 minutes of the last game and I kicked them out of the room. [They] tried to play football on the couch, throw things at me. They can watch seven minutes with me today.”

Spoelstra also revealed that he was not responsible for the only tweet sent by his Twitter account, in 2010, which read “Great Training Camp, fired up for the season.”

He said that tweet was sent by his brother-in-law Peter Metz: “He set up my Twitter account and said, ‘Hey you’re going to need to do this at some point.’... He thought it was the funniest thing ever.”

Will Spoelstra ever tweet? “I won’t but Peter might. He can do whatever he wants with my Twitter account.”

Spoelstra’s Twitter account, which has the handle of @CoachSpo, has more than 34,000 followers.