Ira Winderman: With Tyler Herro it always was going to be a waiting game

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 January 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.

IN THE LANE

NUNN SENSE: Sidelined by injuries all of last season following his free-agency move from the Heat, Kendrick Nunn appears to be hitting his stride with the Los Angeles Lakers, possibly even as an opening-night starter with LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook. “The way his career was trending coming from Miami, I want to pick right back up where he left off, and he’s embraced it. He fit. He totally fits with ‘Bron and Russ,’’ new Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “With Kendrick, you got a really big-time catch-and-shoot player, also a player that can play pick-and-roll, also a player that can score at all three levels. He can score at the rim, he can score in the mid-range, he can score threes, as I mentioned before. He’s like a little water bug defensively. He can squeeze through pick-and-rolls, he can avoid screens, he can chase, he’s athletic, so he gets good contests on shots.” After starting the Lakers’ preseason opener, Nunn played off the bench in their second exhibition, finishing with 21 points in 19 minutes.

DISTANT MEMORY: In signing with the Chicago Bulls as a free agent, former Heat guard Goran Dragic has returned to the scene of the crime. It was as a neophyte second-year player with the Phoenix Suns in 2009 when Dragic was posterized by a dunk for the ages by then-Bulls guard Derrick Rose. “I was young – that was my second year in the league – so I had to go for that play,” Dragic told the Chicago Tribune. “Of course, if I knew, I would never go. But it is what it is. At least I’m on TV all the time.” At 36, Dragic said he still draws motivation from the Heat’s run to the 2020 NBA Finals against the Lakers, a series that ended with Dragic limited by a foot injury. “Unfortunately I got hurt in the Finals, and still to this day I cannot sleep well because I want to be back,” he said. “I still have that hunger and I feel good, I feel healthy. I’m not the youngest anymore, but I still have that passion and that is the most important.” The Bulls and Heat open their regular seasons Oct. 19 at FTX Arena.

MENTOR, TOO: Speaking of former Heat guards turned veteran mentor, Josh Richardson, at the ripe old age of 29, finds himself in somewhat of that role with the rebuilding San Antonio Spurs. Of the 20 players with the Spurs in the preseason, 10 are 22 or younger. “I’m going to help them however I can and see how it shakes out,” said Richardson, who joined the Spurs last season in the trade that sent Derrick White to the Boston Celtics. Richardson said it is about accepting his lot and contributing as needed. “They listen and they’re hungry, so I appreciate it,” Richardson told San Antonio’s Express News of the Spurs’ young players. “But it’s a blessing. It’s my eighth year in the league. I’m thankful every day.”

FITTING IN: Former Heat forward Justise Winslow said he believes he might have found his coaching match in the Portland Trail Blazers’ Chauncey Billups, who comes from a playing lineage with the feisty championship Detroit Pistons. “I think deep down, he knows I could have played on some of those Bad Boys teams,” Winslow, traded last February from the Los Angeles Clippers, told Portland’s Oregonian. “I think I have that mentality. I embody some of those characteristics that made those teams so successful. So, I think when he just sees the intensity that I play with, my focus, my grit, my toughness, I think it kind of brings him back to some of those Detroit teams he was on.”

NUMBER

$10 million. Incentives in Tyler Herro’s extension, with annual bonuses of $1 million for being named NBA Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, first-team All-NBA or second-team All-NBA, as well as a $500,000 bonus if named third-team All-NBA. In each case, he must play in 75% of his team’s regular-season games to collect. In addition, the bonuses are capped at $2.5 million total for each of the four years on his extension that begins with the 2023-24 season.