The Miami Heat’s season came to a screeching halt on Wednesday night, as they suffered their third straight blowout loss at the hands of the Boston Celtics in Game 5 to officially lose their first-round playoff series. As was the case for much of the series, Tyler Herro struggled mightily on both ends of the floor, leading to a relatively eye-opening admission from his fellow star teammate Bam Adebayo.

With guys like Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier missing this entire series, the Heat had their work cut out for them, with Herro and Adebayo being tasked with shouldering the load on offense. While Adebayo held up his end of the bargain, it was a different story for Herro aside from his dominant Game 2 performance. And when asked to reflect on Herro’s struggles, Adebayo quickly explained what the Celtics were able to do to get Herro off his game throughout the series.

“They definitely got him out of his rhythm. Sending him different coverages, pressing him full court. They just took him out of his rhythm.” – Bam Adebayo, NESN

Tyler Herro reflects on his struggles against the Celtics

Herro is used to playing in an offense where there are other scorers who can take attention off of him, but he didn’t have that luxury in this series. While the Celtics were largely content to allow Adebayo to take his mid-range jumpers, they constantly were blitzing Herro when he was on the ball with different defensive looks, and it clearly had a big impact on him.

It was a unique challenge for the talented young guard that he likely would rather have not had to face in the playoffs, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Herro admitted that the Celtics did a good job throwing different looks at him to disrupt his rhythm, but he also believes that he can use his woes in this series to help him improve as a player moving forward.

“I obviously haven’t looked back on the whole series, it just ended, but feel like I’m going to be able to take away a lot from how they guarded me throughout the whole series. The face guards, double teams, switches, really crowding the paint when I did get in the paint and then really making it tough on me at all times, not allowing me to kind of see one go through to catch a rhythm.” – Tyler Herro, NESN

There’s no doubt that this series looks different if the Heat were healthy, but they got bit by the injury bug at the worst time, and they ultimately didn’t have enough to overcome a loaded Celtics team. Herro’s stock certainly isn’t trending upwards after this ugly showing, so now it will be up to him to put in the work over the offseason and prove that he can bounce back from this rough series.