Herro accepts bench role for now but strives to be a starter, All-Star
Heat guard Tyler Herro wants to be an NBA starter, but he accepted his role off the bench this season.
The results were spectacular: Herro finished the regular season as the league’s top bench scorer with 20.8 points per game as a reserve and was named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year on Tuesday.
“I knew what our roster looked like, why we put this team together with the thought of winning a championship,” Herro said Tuesday night after learning he had won this season’s Sixth Man of the Year Award. “My role is to come off the bench as the sixth man, and that’s something that I accepted from Day One. I knew that it would work out. I came off the bench my first two years and now this year, being sixth man with a bigger and a higher usage rate, I’m able to impact the game in different ways.”
Herro, 22, is right. He might be playing off the bench, but he’s among the Heat’s most important offensive players.
Herro closed the regular season averaging a teamhigh 17 shot attempts per game and posted the highest usage rate (an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while on the court) on the team at 27.8 percent. His usage rate as the Heat’s sixth man was comparable to All-Stars such as Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns (27.2 percent), Chicago’s Zach LaVine (28.4 percent) and Golden State’s Stephen Curry (29.3 percent) during the regular season.
“My teammates and coaches allowed me to be myself,” Herro said. “I’m usually best when I’m scoring the ball and having the ball in my hands. My teammates trust me and that’s why it worked out.”
Playing as a reserve has become the norm for Herro, who has started in just 33 of his 175 regularseason appearances during his first three NBA seasons.
But this season felt different than last season, when Herro was moved to a bench role after starting in his first 14 appearances. He finished an up-anddown sophomore NBA campaign averaging 15.1 points on 43.9 percent shooting from the field and 36 percent shooting on threes last regular season.
This regular season, Herro averaged a careerhigh 20.7 points and four assists while shooting a career-best 44.7 percent from the field and 39.9 percent from three-point range in 66 games (10 starts). The Heat never tried to fit Herro into the starting lineup this year, as each of his 10 starts came because at least one of the usual starters was out.
“I just took the role and wanted to be the best sixth man,” Herro said. “I figured if I’m coming off the bench, I want to be the best bench player in the league and then also lead the second unit on the team and try to be the best second unit in the league.”
Herro credits Heat captain Udonis Haslem for helping him realize that a third straight season off the bench wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“We had a talk last summer after we got our full roster set,” Herro said. “I talked to him and he pretty much just told me that as long as we’re winning and I’m coming off the bench playing well, I can still reach the goals and the achievements that I want to reach one day.”
One day, Herro wants to be a starter and an All-Star.
“I want to be an All-Star in the next year or two,” Herro said. “Just continuing to get better, I want to be able to make another jump like I made this year, and make another one next year. Just continue to keep progressing and just one day be an All-Star.”
But Herro is not taking his Sixth Man of the Year Award for granted. He’s the first player in Heat history to earn the honor.
“It’s cool,” Herro said. “I’m honored to be the first one and I’m sure there will be another one
in the future.”
MORE LOVE FOR TUCKER
Spoelstra is known to meet with coaches from different sports in the offseason as part of his ongoing self-improvement program. Spoelstra just doesn’t often make it known who he meets with.
Following Tuesday’s practice while answering a question about Heat forward P.J. Tucker, Spoelstra revealed that he has become friends with Clem- son football coach Dabo Swinney.
“[Swinney] and I have been friends for a few years. I visited him,” Spoel- stra said before catching himself. “Actually, I’m not supposed to say that, right. I’m not going to tell you guys what I do during the summer.
“All right so, as we were hanging out in championship alley after the game, Tuck came by and he was the first guy Dabo went up to and he said: ‘Man, I love the way you play. I love the way you compete. You could have played for us back in the day.’ That’s the way P.J. is. He’s extremely physical, obviously. He’s really competitive. He’s all about the plays in between, the hustle plays, the 5050s. But he’s able to do it with an incredible discipline and a mind. I think that really is what separates him from just being an overly physical guy that just picks up six fouls in 10 minutes.”