COOPER CITY — Scary Terry was scared. This was not how veteran guard Terry Rozier expected his first season with the Miami Heat to end, walking around Kaseya Center in a neck brace.
“It was tough,” Rozier said in a quiet, measured tone Tuesday. “It was tough just to look at myself in a neck brace.”
Now the player nicknamed Scary Terry finds himself in a better place, including interacting Tuesday with the youth at the team’s summer camp at Cooper City High School.
“Doing great, feeling great. I’m cleared to play. I’ve been on the court,” he said after posing with campers for photos. “Shout out to the guys in the Miami Heat in getting me right. I’ve been lifting and doing everything else that I need to do. So I feel great.”
The next plan is to work with the team in Las Vegas later this week at summer league, as part of what has been a long, strange journey since being acquired in January from the Charlotte Hornets for Kyle Lowry and a future first-round draft pick.
Rozier, who is entering the third year of the four-year, $96.3 million extension he signed with the Hornets in August 2021, missed the final four games of the regular season with what the Heat listed as a neck spasm, initially dealing with the discomfort in the April 7 road loss to the Indiana Pacers that effectively dropped the Heat into the play-in bracket.
He then missed both of the Heat’s play-in games, as well as the five-game first-round playoff loss to the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics.
“Obviously we all know why I came here, to be a big help for the playoffs and just to try to get this team some life,” the 30-year-old veteran said. “It just sucks that I couldn’t play in the most important part of the season, and I had to watch the guys that I go to war with. So it was tough.
“It was tough just from that Indiana game on to now. It was just non-stop thinking about me just wishing I was out there with my guys. That’s why I’m glad that I’m cleared and everything else will take of itself when the time comes.”
As for the neck brace? Merely a precaution, Rozier said.
“It was just a mutual agreement with me and the Heat that I wasn’t feeling the best, of I wasn’t super comfortable,” he said. “So we definitely sat it out, waited it out. I think that I would have played in the second round if we would have made it. But obviously that didn’t happen.
“But, like I said, most important thing is I’m feeling better now and I’m in the facility every day just getting better and I’ll be ready for next season, when training camp starts.”
With no lingering concerns, cleared now for two weeks.
“There wasn’t no fear of that, there was no fear of that,” he said when asked about potentially debilitating long-term effects. “It was the most difficult thing was me not playing with the guys. But obviously you just want to listen to your body and you got to get right first. But it was never a time where we were worried about me not playing basketball. Nothing like that.”
The focus now, he said, is developing chemistry with Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Jimmy Butler in Erik Spoelstra’s coaching system, development stunted with that quartet on the court together only 10 times last season.
“At the end of the day, we want to run it back with our same team, and we want to show the fans what we can bring to Miami,” said Rozier, who had a nine-game stretch from March 18 to April 4 where he averaged 21.2 points. “Obviously last year was tough on us, all of it as a whole. But we’re looking to get out there and impact, and make an impact all together.
“I think we’ll be fine with the great mind of Spo. We’ll be good.”
While there will be a bit of a remix, with Caleb Martin, Delon Wright, Patty Mills and Jamal Cain gone, and with Alec Burks and draft picks Kel’el Ware and Pelle Larsson added, Rozier sees mostly a roster returning on a mission.
“I think it’s picking up where we left off,” he said. “But I think everybody got kind of a sour taste. I think everybody wants to prove people wrong. I think everybody is ruling us out and doubting us, which is fine.
“I think we have the right mindset that we want to prove people wrong. So whatever we decide to do as an organization, I know me and those guys that’s going to put on a Heat jersey will be ready.”
