The Heat Have No Choice But To Throw A Hail Mary To Keep Their Season Alive And Activate Tyler Herro For Game 5

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At this point, down 3-1 on the road against a team on the brink of winning their first ever NBA title, everything has to be on the table. For the Heat, that apparently means throwing Tyler Herro out there and hoping for the best. While I think it's maybe a little unfair to Herro to assume he's going to be some sort of savior after not playing any sort of competitive basketball since he got hurt on 4/16, at this point what choice do the Heat have? Even if he's not 100%, can he be better than this?

At the very least it would in theory give the Heat another shot creator which their offense desperately needs, and if he's healthy enough to shoot the basketball, even with a fucked up hand it can't be worse than what they're currently getting. The Heat have failed to break 100 points in 3 of the 4 games in this series, and a big part of that is now that the open/wide open 3s have stopped dropping at an insane rate, consistent and efficient offense  has been hard to come by. Herro could certainly help with that, and then you add in the emotional lift you might be able to get by having one of your main guys back in the rotation and who knows, maybe this is something that helps the Heat steal Game 5 and get back to their own building. Granted they've lost 4 straight at home, but at this point all you're looking to do right now is keep your season alive. 

There's also the reality that none of this could even matter. The Nuggets certainly do not give off the vibes of a team that is looking ahead and already assumes they've won the title. 

If the Nuggets simply play their game and don't do dumb shit, they will become champions tonight. Something tells me they won't forget about what happened in Game 2 and will make sure they are on top of things when it comes to running the Heat off the 3PT line and making sure they aren't careless with the basketball. They've actually been awesome with that in these Finals, averaging just 11.5 TOs which has limited the Heat to averaging just 13.3 points off TOs. Unless they get around 19-20 points off TOs a night, breaking 100 is pretty tough for them. As you'll remember, they had 19 in their only win this series (Game 2). 

If I'm the Nuggets, I don't really overreact to Herro playing. Make him prove he can beat you in his minutes. Get up into him with ball pressure and force him to dribble with that hand. Everything we've seen from Malone and the Nuggets gameplan suggests they don't need to change much, and really the biggest hurdle for them will probably be their own nerves. The fans are ready for this title, the trophy is going to be in the building, and many consider Game 5 a formality. The mental focus will be the tough part in my opinion, the basketball shit has already been solved.