Herro’s numbers show he’s worthy of Sixth Man award
Some perspective on the season put together by Heat guard Tyler Herro and comparisons to those who have won the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award.
Several NBA luminaries have won the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award over its 40 years, from Kevin McHale to James Harden to Bill Walton to Toni Kukoc to Detlef Schrempf.
But only three players — during the season in which they won the award — scored at the heights that Heat guard Tyler Herro has achieved this season.
Herro enters Sunday’s 7 p.m. regular-season finale at Orlando averaging 20.7 points per game (20.8 when he comes off the bench) and remains the heavy favorite to win
Sixth Man of the Year, with media balloting due to conclude by Monday night’s deadline. (Playoffs are not considered in
NBA award voting.)
It’s unclear whether Herro — among others — will play Sunday, with Miami having already clinched the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
To put Herro’s season in perspective, consider that the only three players who won Sixth Man of the Year with a higher scoring average than Herro’s average this season are:
Lou Williams, who averaged 22.6 points in 2017-18.
Eddie Johnson, who averaged 21.5 in 1988-89.
Ricky Pierce, who averaged 23.0 in 198990.
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So Herro is positioned not only to win the award but produce a singleseason body of work that ranks in the upper tier offensively among the all-time winners.
“He’s special,” Heat forward Jimmy Butler said this past week. “His confidence is at an all-time high, as it should be. That Sixth Man of the Year, we already know who it’s going to.
“But he deserves it because he does work incredibly hard and he cares about winning first and he’s gotten so much better at not only taking and making shots, but getting everybody else easy shots, getting stops when needed, moving the ball, making all these right reads.
“He’s key to what we’ve been doing, not just right now. We need that T. Herro when the playoffs roll around.”
What’s more, Herro has guaranteed becoming the fifth player in the past 40 years to average 20 points as a reserve, joining Williams (twice), Johnson, Pierce and Thurl Bailey.
It’s notable that threetime Sixth Man of the
Year winner Jamal Crawford never averaged as many points as Herro has this season.
Williams, who also won the award three times, has topped Herro’s scoring average only one of those