Takeaways from Tyler Herro’s big night that helped put the Heat one win away from NBA Finals
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 112-109 win over the Boston Celtics on Wednesday in the Eastern Conference finals at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista. Miami, which is 11-2 this postseason, holds a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 series:
Heat rookie Tyler Herro was the best player on the court in Game 4.
Herro was a force, finishing with a career-high 37 points while shooting 14 of 21 from the field and 5 of 10 on threes, to go with six rebounds and three assists in 36 minutes. He scored 17 points in the fourth quarter.
Those 37 points set a new record for the most points scored by a Heat rookie in a playoff game, surpassing the 27 points Dwyane Wade scored on May 2, 2004 in Game 6 of Miami’s first-round series against the then-New Orleans Hornets.
Herro is the fifth NBA rookie to score 37 or more points in a playoff game since 1970. The other NBA rookies to do it in the last 50 years are Donovan Mitchell (2018), Chuck Person (1987), Magic Johnson (1980) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (three times in 1970).
Herro is also only the second player in NBA history to score 37 or more points in a playoff game at age 20 or younger. The only other player on that list is Johnson (1980).
On top of all that, Herro’s 37 points are tied for the fifth-most by a player off the bench in a playoff game.
If that wasn’t enough, Herro has scored double-digit points in each of his first 13 playoff games, joining Elgin Baylor (1959) and Alvan Adams (1976) as the only rookies in NBA history to begin a postseason with 13 consecutive double-digit scoring performances.
Herro has averaged 16.5 points while shooting 44.8 percent from the field and 37.8 percent on threes, 5.7 rebounds and 3.9 assists in the playoffs.
“I think everybody over estimates what you can do in a day and what you can do in months of work and sweat and grind when nobody is watching,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Herro. “He is relentless with his work ethic. Nobody was paying attention to us during the year. He had a lot of tough moments. He did. He had some moments where it was up and down and learning about our demands on defense. But he is a worker, and he shows up the next day trying to get better every single day.”
Herro credited All-Star teammate Jimmy Butler for his rookie success after the game.
“Jimmy, ever since I got here, he has been like a big brother to me and he has shined light on me,” Herro said. “He has taught me a lot of things. He’s just continuing to get on me, whether it’s something I want to hear or not, he’s going to tell me what I need to hear. I appreciate him for that. Without Jimmy, I probably wouldn’t be doing this as a rookie.”
And Butler returned the favor with a compliment for Herro, calling it “another day at the office” for his young teammate.
“I think he has been playing this way for a long time,” Butler said. “He’s comfortable. He picks his spots. He works on everything that you see him do in the game, in the pick-and-roll and the iso situation. I think the game slowed down for him a long time ago. Now, he’s just playing at an incredibly high level. Y’all see it now because of where we are in the playoffs. But he has been doing this year-long now, and we want him to continue to play that way.”
Heat center Bam Adebayo said of Herro’s performance: “I wasn’t surprised because I knew what the kid could do. I was the one that put the bug in Pat [Riley’s] ear to draft the kid — just saying. I’m not shocked about the success. He comes in the gym every day — great work ethic, great dude. He doesn’t bother anybody, just works and before the game I see him writing in his little journal about certain stuff during the game, and for a kid like that to meet moments in the playoffs, the way he’s playing, it’s not shocking at all because he has put in so much work and preparation for moments like this.”
Celtics coach Brad Stevens said that “Herro was ridiculously good tonight. That rim must have looked like the ocean to him.”
While Herro was the star of the game, the Heat’s trio of Adebayo, Butler and Goran Dragic was pretty good, too.
Adebayo finished with 20 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and two steals. He seemed to hurt his shoulder late in the game, but said he just twisted it and “it’s nothing too major” during his postgame session with reporters.
Butler recorded 24 points, nine rebounds and three assists.
Dragic ended the night with 22 points, five rebounds and three assists.
“Bam was tremendous on the offensive glass, getting us some extra possessions,” Spoelstra said. “Jimmy got a relief pull-up jumper. Goran hit that big three and Tyler was generating a ton of offense for us in that second half. But you need that. You’re going to need it. Probably even more of that the next game.”
The Heat was looking for a better start in Game 4, and that’s exactly what it got.
In Game 1 of the East finals, the Heat rallied from a 14-point deficit to win.
In Game 2, the Heat rallied from a 17-point deficit to win.
In Game 3, the Heat trailed by as many as 20 points and couldn’t complete another comeback.
But Miami didn’t need to rally in Game 4. A strong start kept the Heat ahead for most of the night, as Miami took the lead with 11:05 remaining in the second quarter and held onto it the rest of the way — other than a short 16-second stretch that Boston had a one-point lead in the fourth quarter.
This was important for the Heat, which was outscored by 26 points in the first half of the first three games of the conference finals.
On Wednesday, Miami won the first quarter 24-23. The Heat has won just four of 13 first quarters this postseason.
Miami also entered halftime with a 50-44 lead. It marked the first first half the Heat has won in the East finals.
The Heat then led by as many as 12 points in the third quarter.
But the finish was a little shaky for Miami, as a nine-point lead with 56.2 seconds to play turned into a three-point win.
Miami overcame subpar shooting numbers in Game 4 (42.9 percent from the field and 27 percent on threes) with the help of nine more shot attempts than Boston. That advantage came because the Heat committed just eight turnovers to the Celtics’ 19 turnovers on Wednesday.
It was a strange night for Celtics star Jayson Tatum, who didn’t score his first points of the game until there was 6:48 remaining in the third quarter. Tatum finished with 28 points on 10-of-22 shooting.
It was also a strange night for the Heat, which shot just 10 of 37 on threes and still won. Miami is 7-11 this season when making 10 or fewer threes in a game.
One of Spoelstra’s adjustments after the Heat’s Game 3 loss? A different and shorter bench rotation.
The starting five was the same as it has been throughout the playoffs: Dragic, Duncan Robinson, Butler, Jae Crowder and Adebayo.
But Spoelstra switched things up with the reserves, using forward Solomon Hill as the third player off Miami’s bench Wednesday behind Herro and Andre Iguodala. It marked Hill’s first minutes this postseason, and his first playoff minutes since May 8, 2018 as a member of the New Orleans Pelicans.
Hill finished scoreless in four minutes.
But that wasn’t the only change to the Heat’s rotation in Game 4. Spoelstra also tightened the rotation, using eight players Wednesday instead of the usual nine or 10 players he has used in most games this postseason.
Herro, Iguodala and Hill were the only players used off Miami’s bench in Game 4. Derrick Jones Jr. (has played in 10 of Miami’s 13 playoff games), Kendrick Nunn (has played in nine of 13 playoff games) and Kelly Olynyk (has played in 11 of 13 playoff games) did not play.
Considering Hill’s limited minutes, Spoelstra really only used seven players in Game 4.
“I think both teams are going whatever they feel is necessary at this point,” Spoelstra said when asked about his rotation adjustments. “You have two highly competitive teams. There’s not a lot of margin for error either way. ... We went with this rotation tonight, but it’s whatever is necessary for the next game. But there are a lot of guys that contributed to this.”
Because of the shorter rotation, minutes went up for Heat players Wednesday.
Adebayo logged 41 minutes, Butler logged 39 minutes, Dragic logged 39 minutes, Herro logged 36 minutes and Crowder logged 31 minutes.
Even the 36-year-old Iguodala, who played just seven minutes in Games 2 and 3, finished with three points, two rebounds, two assists and three steals in 27 minutes in Game 4.
The Heat was “very disappointed” that a Louisville, Kentucky, grand jury indicted only one of the three officers involved in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor on Wednesday.
“Like everybody else, very disappointed,” Spoelstra said just before the start of Game 4. “I think all of us don’t understand it. It’s not justice. The $12 million [the city of Louisville agreed to pay to Taylor’s family in a civil settlement over her death] looks like such a ridiculously empty payoff. It’s all about justice and it was not served.”
Officer Brett Hankison was charged with three counts of wanton endangerment, the court announced Wednesday. No charges were filed against the other officers whose use of force was justified, according to Attorney General Daniel Cameron who spoke after the grand jury reported its findings.
None of the three wanton endangerment charges against Hankison were related to Taylor’s death. He was charged over bullets he shot that went into neighboring apartments.
“These are unprecedented times and there’s incredible disappointment and frustration in our locker room, as well there should be,” Spoelstra said. “Our guys have been able to manage a lot of this disappointment over the last several months of things that have been happening for obviously way too long.”
When asked if there had been a conversation on whether to skip Wednesday night’s game as a form of protest, Spoelstra said less than two hours before tip-off that “to my knowledge, we have not had those discussions yet.”
Various NBA players and coaches have demanded and continue to demand justice for Taylor, a Black emergency medical technician who was shot and killed in Louisville in March after police officers executed a no-knock warrant at her apartment related to a narcotics investigation.
Stevens called the grand jury’s ruling “demoralizing news” and said it felt like a “setback” during his pregame media session.
“This doesn’t feel good today,” Stevens said. “So what I told the team was, I just sent them a text midday, because everybody has their own thing that they do during the day of the game, and I just said, If you need somebody to vent to, if you need somebody to talk to, if you want to call or get me in person at the gym, feel free.”
The Heat is in very good position to advance to the NBA Finals for the sixth time in franchise history, and for the first time since 2014.
Miami owns a perfect 11-0 all-time record in playoff series that it has taken a 3-1 lead in, which it now has over Boston in the East finals.
How important was Game 4 for the Heat? Losing would have tied the series at 2-2, and Miami has a 9-9 all-time record in playoff series that it’s tied 2-2 in after four games.
The last time a team seeded fifth or lower made it to the NBA Finals came in 1999, when the eighth-seeded New York Knicks represented the East in the championship series.
The winner of the East finals will advance to the NBA Finals to take on the Western Conference champion, with the Los Angeles Lakers leading the Denver Nuggets 2-1 in that series.
This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 1:17 AM.
