Heat’s Tyler Herro details his latest COVID-19 scare and how he was cleared to rejoin team

Tyler Herro was informed just minutes before Thursday’s road game against the Houston Rockets that he would not be able to play because of the NBA’s COVID-19 health and safety protocols. But the Miami Heat guard was cleared to rejoin the team for Thursday’s late night postgame flight to Salt Lake City.

What happened during that span of about five hours?

“I found out like five minutes before [coach Erik Spoelstra] came in and spoke to the team. They said that I tested positive,” said Herro, who is expected to play Saturday night against the Utah Jazz at Vivint Arena after missing Thursday’s win over the Rockets. “I had to sit in the arena and watch the game in this little room. I completed like two or three tests and they all came back negative. So that allowed me to travel with the team to Utah.”

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Spoelstra said Thursday that he learned Herro would not play against the Rockets “17 seconds before I was going into speak to the team” before the game.

“I was literally putting my uniform on, getting ready to play,” Herro said. “I went through my whole routine and everything. Five minutes before [our pregame meeting], the trainer came and told me that I had tested positive.”

It turned out to be a false positive.

Of his experience watching Thursday’s game in an isolation room at Toyota Center while waiting for further test results, Herro said: “It was like a little tiny room. I felt like I was in jail. The TV was tiny and it had a shower, so I was able to shower and watch the game. So it was alright. But obviously, I wanted to be out there.”

Herro, who previously said he tested positive for COVID-19 last spring during the NBA shutdown, would have likely been forced to miss at least about two weeks if he had contracted the virus for a second time. He would have likely missed seven days if he was determined to be a close contact to a positive case.

Herro recently went through another COVID-19 scare when his status was in question for a Feb. 1 game against the Charlotte Hornets because of health and safety protocols. A person Herro lives with tested positive for COVID-19, but he was not forced to miss any time because that also turned out to be a false positive.

Herro, 21, entered Saturday averaging 17 points on 45.1 percent shooting from the field and 34.7 percent shooting on threes, 6.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists in 17 games (14 starts) this season.

“It’s crazy. I feel like my name keeps coming up in it,” Herro said. “Now we’ve had two false positives under my name. So it’s all part of the world we’re living in right now. I just hope I don’t have to continue to deal with it.”

The Heat has already been one of the teams most impacted by the NBA’s health and safety protocols, playing two games (Jan. 12 and Jan. 14 losses to the Philadelphia 76ers) with the NBA minimum of eight available players because of COVID-19 issues.

Already this season, health and safety protocols forced Jimmy Butler to miss 10 straight games; Avery Bradley to miss eight straight games; and Bam Adebayo, Goran Dragic, Moe Harkless, Udonis Haslem, Kendrick Nunn and KZ Okpala to miss two straight games. Bradley disclosed that he tested positive for COVID-19 in January.

In addition, the Heat’s Jan. 10 matchup against the Boston Celtics at TD Garden was postponed because of the NBA’s health and safety protocols. Miami did not have the NBA minimum of eight available players to proceed with the game due to an ongoing contact tracing investigation.

“We’re living in crazy time right now, playing in the NBA and going from city to city,” Herro said. “We’re getting tested daily, multiple times a day. I feel like at any point, any team or any guy can falsely test positive. That’s just the world we’re living in.”

AGGRESSIVE ADEBAYO?

During the Heat’s win over the Rockets on Thursday, Houston used smaller defenders like 6-4 Jae’Sean Tate on Adebayo (6-9).

Adebayo finished with 10 points on 3-of-8 shooting from the field and 4-of-5 shooting from the foul line, 13 rebounds, eight assists and eight turnovers. It’s the fewest shots that Adebayo has attempted in a game since taking four shots in a road win over the Washington Wizards on Jan. 9.

“I got to take advantage of that,” Adebayo said following Thursday’s game. “That’s on me. ... I just got to be more aggressive.”

By “more aggressive,” Adebayo means: “I got to score. That’s basically it. There’s no other scheme, nothing. Once I catch it, I got to score. That’s the bottom line.”

For Spoelstra, it was less about the defensive coverage that Houston used against Adebayo and more about Miami’s offense as a whole.

“It’s not about that coverage,” Spoelstra said. “It’s more about our execution to detail, and doing things with energy and purpose. Everything in the fourth quarter was in the mud and it didn’t necessarily need to be. But we’ll watch the film and work on that to make sure we’re better with that. [Adebayo] will look better if he’s on the move, everybody working together to generate the looks that we need.”

TRADE TALK

The Sacramento Bee reported Saturday that the Heat is among the teams that have shown interest in Sacramento Kings forward Nemanja Bjelica.

Bjelica (6-10, 234) has fallen out of the Kings’ rotation this season. He averaged 11.5 points while shooting 41.9 percent on threes, 6.4 rebounds and 2.8 assists in 72 games (67 starts) last season.

Bjelica, who is in the final season his contract and has a salary of $7.2 million this season, would fit into the Heat’s a $7.6 million trade exception that expires March 22. Trade exceptions allow teams to trade for a player whose salary fits into the exception without having to send back salary.

The NBA’s trade deadline is March 25 this season.

HEAT SCHEDULE CHANGE

The Feb. 24 game between the Heat and Toronto Raptors at AmericanAirlines Arena will now start at 8 p.m. It was previously scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m.

In addition, the Heat-Raptors game will no longer be televised by ESPN. The network instead replaced it with a Feb. 24 matchup between the Golden State Warriors and Indiana Pacers.

▪ The Heat ruled out Bradley (right calf strain), Dragic (left ankle sprain), Meyers Leonard (left shoulder surgery) and Chris Silva (left hip flexor strain) for Saturday’s game against the Jazz.