Heat rookie Herro taking major steps forward during postseason
Whenever the Miami Heat’s season ends, rookie guard Tyler Herro will have plenty to reflect on. The season, after all, started almost a full calendar year ago.
But Herro has saved his best work for the NBA’s Disney bubble, coming out of the league’s fourmonth shutdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic as an improved and refined player.
“Just taking it all in, obviously,” Herro said, with the Heat trailing the Los Angeles Lakers 3-1 in the NBA Finals entering Friday’s Game 5.
“It’s happening quick for all of us — series by series and game by game. Really just taking it all in as we’re going. I haven’t really gotten a chance to sit back and really reflect since we’re still here.”
At 20 years old, Herro’s play this postseason has been historic:
With 316 points, Herro is only the sixth rookie in NBA history to score
Tyler Herro is in the middle of an historic playoff run. He’s already broken several rookie records while playing in the NBA Finals.
more than 300 points in the playoffs. Herro is fifth on that list behind Elgin Baylor (331 points), Alvan Adams (341), Jayson Tatum (351) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (352).
Herro has already set NBA records for the most three-pointers made by a rookie in the playoffs (45) and Finals (eight).
Herro is the youngest player in NBA history to start a Finals game.
Herro is the youngest player in NBA history to score at least 20 points in a Finals game. He scored 21 in Tuesday’s Game 4 loss.
With his 37-point performance in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, Herro became the second player in NBA history to score 37 or more points in a playoff game at age 20 or younger. The other player on that list is Magic Johnson (1980).
That list of accomplishments is a representation of just how much Herro’s game has grown since the first few months of the season.
Herro averaged 12.9 points while shooting 41.4 percent from the field and 39.1 percent on threes, four rebounds and 1.9 assists in 47 games before the fourmonth NBA shutdown. He was forced to miss 15 of the 16 games heading into the stoppage because of right ankle soreness.
During the Heat’s playoff run, Herro has averaged 16.6 points while shooting 44.1 percent from the field and 36.6 percent on threes, 5.4 rebounds and 3.7 assists. The Heat trusts Herro enough that he has logged a team-high 215 minutes in the fourth quarter this postseason.
“It was kind of like a mini-offseason, I would say,” Herro said of the four-month shutdown. “I worked pretty much every day. Even the days that they told us not to be in the gym, I was in the gym getting work in. I think that was probably why coming into the bubble that I felt comfortable.”
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said: “With Tyler it feels like he’s not really a 20-year-old rookie player with us. He has been through three training camps, he went through summer league last year, went through our training camp, went through a full season, and then the restart, he went through a training camp here. So it almost feels like this is his third season in many regards.”
The spike in Herro’s game was noticeable from the start after the Heat entered the Disney bubble in early July for three weeks of practices before the resumption of the season.
“I watched these practices from Day 1 [via video] when we went to the bubble,” said longtime Heat executive Chet Kammerer, who was the vice president of player personnel and led Miami’s draft scouting team for many years before becoming a senior advisor to basketball operations in 2018. “After watching a week of practice down there, I remember talking to the staff and I’m saying: ‘You know who doesn’t look like a rookie anymore? Tyler.’
“Even in practice, you could see this guy was the best player on the court a few days. I’m not saying every day or anything. But I’m saying that he went from being a rookie to this guy has taken a major step just from the start of the year to right now when we were gathering for the start of practices.”
Among the aspects of Herro’s game that have improved is his ability to play on the ball, make the correct passing reads and finish around the basket.
Not only is Herro (6-5, 195 pounds) averaging almost two more assists in the playoffs than he did in games before the fourmonth hiatus, but his assist-to-turnover-ratio has also improved from 1.4 to 1.9 during that time. He has also added more creative finishes to his repertoire, shooting 51.9 percent on 2.7 shots per game from the restricted area in the playoffs compared to 48.8 percent on 1.7 shots from the restricted area before the NBA shutdown.
“He has surprised us, all of us, I think. He’s not just a shooter, we’re finding out,” Kammerer said.
“He’s showing the ability to rebound, his ability to read the situation, his ability to give you his own shot, his ability to find the open man and handle the ball as well as he did. To me, his game has expanded in one year significantly. It’s a credit to the fact that they have really, really drilled him and really, really worked with him. He also is a very eager learner.”
This is all positive news for the Heat, and not exactly what the organization expected when it drafted Herro with the 13th pick last year.
“I think all of us really, really liked the fact that he could shoot,” Kammerer recalls of the Heat’s predraft conversations about Herro. “I know that’s simple. But one of my comments to our staff was,
‘You know, guys, through my 20-something years here, we’ve only picked one or two shooters.’
“One of my points was, and our staff agreed is this guy, his greatest strength is his ability to shoot the ball. Part of it is that the game is changing that shooting is so important. That was a big part of why we drafted him, because we thought the guy could really, really shoot. We thought that he might be the best shooter in the whole draft.
“Originally we thought: ‘We can use just a shooter.’ But he has expanded his game to where now he can get his own shot some and then he can make plays for others.”
When asked what has improved the most in recent months, Herro pointed to his “pace” and “making the right reads.”
“Spo and the coaching staff were always on me about making the right reads on offense and being in the right spots early on defense,” Herro said. “Just the way they coach me, the more you hear it then you can install it into your game. I think that time off made me better.”
These days, Herro carries around a spiral-bound notebook to keep notes on game plans and things he sees on the court. It’s an idea Herro’s friends in Miami came up with, and he implemented it into his routine when the season resumed.
“Before I left for the bubble, a couple days prior I started taking notes on everything I was doing, how my workouts were and stuff like that,” Herro said. “I just did it throughout the bubble. It does help me for sure. It keeps me locked in, just always reminding myself of what I need to do. I think if you write it down, it really gets implemented into your head. I think the more I do that, the more you can learn from the game. So I’m taking notes and just making it a habit.”
Another habit Herro has developed in his first NBA season?
Exceeding expectations. “The more games we’ve played, the more trust they have in me,” Herro said of Heat coaches. “When you see me play, you’re going to see more and more. I think that’s pretty much it. I think just over time, they trust me more and more and my teammates trust me, as well.”