The Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat were already headed toward a fresh round of tension after the massive Giannis Antetokounmpo trade. Now the rivalry has reportedly taken a physical turn.
Per ESPN’s Shams Charania, Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo, former Heat teammates before the blockbuster trade, were involved in a physical altercation in Las Vegas on Friday morning. Charania posted details for @SportsCenter on the incident involving Adebayo and Herro at a Las Vegas hotel gym.
There are still very few details available about what happened, but the timing only adds fuel to a rivalry that had already started to boil again. In recent weeks, there were alleged direct messages in which Herro criticized Adebayo’s play during their time together in Miami. Adebayo apparently did not take those rumored comments lightly.
Herro, meanwhile, appeared to be in good spirits later in the day and was seen without any black eyes during a television appearance.
Whatever happened in Las Vegas, it has pushed a matchup that was already drawing attention into a different lane. Bucks-Heat was going to be one of the league’s most watched pairings next season anyway. Now it comes with another layer of drama.
For a while, the edge between these teams had cooled off. After the 2023 upset, Milwaukee and Miami didn’t meet again in the postseason, and the rivalry quieted down. But the history is still there.
It really began in the 2020 NBA Playoffs, when Miami upset the top-seeded Bucks and reached the NBA Finals. Milwaukee answered a year later with a sweep on the way to its own Finals title.
The Heat then brought in P.J. Tucker from Milwaukee soon after, and in 2023 Miami upset the top-seeded Bucks again.
Milwaukee responded to that last postseason loss by taking Damian Lillard from the Heat, who had seemed like the obvious trade partner for the star guard from the start. Then the teams took another huge swing at each other when they swapped franchise icons.
That alone was enough to make their meetings a major storyline. This latest incident only makes the next Bucks-Heat chapter even harder to ignore.
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