Heat’s P.J. Tucker on his role: ‘If you want recognition, then my job isn’t a job for you’
For P.J. Tucker, the role he’s carved out for himself in the NBA is simple.
“Just having an effect on the game,” Tucker said. ”Some games I don’t get shots. Some games, I may take one shot. But I still got to be able to do my job. I still got to have my footprint on every single game.”
For Tucker’s new Heat coaches and teammates, it’s not that simple. They struggle to put Tucker’s impact into words and it usually doesn’t show up in the box score either.
“P.J. is amazing,” Heat forward Duncan Robinson said, with the Heat (8-5) set to close its five-game West Coast trip on Monday against the Oklahoma City Thunder (8 p.m., Bally Sports Sun). “He doesn’t care about literally anything but that scoreboard and he’ll do whatever it takes to win.
“He comes up to me and says my goal is to get you 15 threes. He’s just selfless like that. You see the way he competes on defense, rebounds. He just wins all those in between areas and he brings a certain level of toughness that I just think sets the tone every single game. Just in terms of guys that I’ve played with, he’s quickly becoming one of my favorites. It’s hard not to love him as a teammate.”
Tucker, 36, is averaging just 6.2 points per game and 28 of his 62 shot attempts have been corner threes, but he makes sure his presence is felt in other ways as the Heat’s starting power forward.
Tucker (6-5, 245) is averaging a career-high 2.2 offensive rebounds and ranks second on the team with 6.5 rebounds per game behind only starting center Bam Adebayo this season. Tucker is also tied for second on the Heat in screen assists with 1.6 per game.
In addition, Tucker has limited those has has guarded this season to just 37.8 percent shooting — 7.8 percent worse than those players’ combined averaging shooting percentage, according to NBA tracking stats.
As for the bottom line statistic, the Heat has outscored its opponent by a team-best total of 64 points with Tucker on the court this season.
“He’s just a winning player,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “That’s probably the shame of it. To the average fan, unless we constantly educate people, no one will have any idea of how many things that he impacts. You’ll notice it when he’s on the other team’s best player defensively. But it’s the block outs, it’s the rotations, it’s the protect-side defense. Then offensively, just getting people open constantly and he does it in every way possible whether he’s screening pick-and-roll basketball or off ball screening. He’s just elite in helping guys get open.”
Tucker finished Saturday’s 111-105 win over the Utah Jazz with 13 points on 5-of-6 shooting from the field and 3-of-3 shooting from three-point range, 11 rebounds and three assists. At halftime of the contest, he had five offensive rebounds and the Jazz had four.
“Tuck is one of the hardest playing guys in the NBA,” said Heat guard Kyle Lowry, who was also Tucker’s teammate with the Toronto Raptors for part of the 2016-17 season. “He should always make an All-Defensive Team. ... He’s a guy who has no let up. No matter how tall he is, he plays at a bigger level and his intensity leads us. His intensity of how he plays, how he handles situations, how he handles guarding people, how he handles his communication is awesome. He’s a veteran veteran and he’s a pro’s pro.”
Spoelstra recently called Tucker “one of the best screeners in this modern day era in terms of his nuances with it, his IQ, timing, deception, feel and his variety of different ways to get guys open.”
“That’s what winning is,” said Tucker, who is in his 11th NBA season and won an NBA championship with the Milwaukee Bucks last season. “It’s enjoying somebody else’s success and knowing that if all my guys get off. If I can get Duncan wide open shots, if I can get Kyle open, if I can get Tyler [Herro] open, it makes it easier for me. Then I get open shots, then I can do the things that I do. That’s a part of my job.”
Tucker signed a two-year contract worth $14.4 million to join the Heat as a free agent this past offseason, and that includes a $7.4 million player option in the second year for next season.
Those that have had Tucker on their team appreciate what he does. But he knows that his game doesn’t get the attention it deserves, and he’s fine with that.
“If you want recognition, then my job isn’t a job for you,” Tucker said. “That’s part of it. I don’t care. I don’t watch highlights. I don’t care if I’m in any. It doesn’t matter to me. There’s nothing like hoisting that trophy up and knowing the things that you do affect that.”
SLUMP BUSTER
Robinson snapped out of his early-season shooting slump to finish Saturday’s win over the Jazz with 22 points on 6-of-11 shooting from three-point range. The six threes represented a season-high for Robinson.
“Duncan picked the basketball tonight, so we might start letting him choose the basketball every single night,” Lowry said with a smile following Saturday’s victory. “... Just to have the opportunity to have Duncan just keep shooting and get some confidence. We’ve continued to build his confidence and keep giving him confidence to shoot, and 6 for 11 is a good night.”
Robinson entered Saturday shooting just 31.2 percent from three-point range through the first 12 games of the season after making an incredible 44.6 percent of his threes in 2019-20 and 40.8 percent of his threes in 2020-21, with only Sacramento’s Buddy Hield (553) and Portland’s Damian Lillard (545) totaling more made threes than Robinson (520) in those two seasons.
Robinson’s three-point percentage for the season went up to 33.3 percent after Saturday’s performance.
“It’s not easy and there were moments, whatever, there have been moments this year when I’ve gotten down,” Robinson said Saturday of dealing with his slow start to the season. “I’m human. But there’s never a doubt if I’m just going to keep going. I do have, in the back of my mind no matter what’s going on, I do have a sense of solace knowing that if I just keep going, the chips will fall where they may and water will find its level.”
INJURY REPORT
Heat star Jimmy Butler is listed as questionable for Monday’s matchup against the Thunder. Butler missed the past two games because of a sprained right ankle.
Bam Adebayo is probable to play with a lingering left knee bruise.
Victor Oladipo (right knee injury recovery) and Markieff Morris (whiplash) remain out for the Heat.
But there is reinforcement on the way for at least one game, as two-way contract guard Marcus Garrett joined the Heat in Oklahoma City for Monday’s game. Garrett has spent the past few weeks playing for the organization’s G League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce.
This story was originally published November 14, 2021 at 9:54 AM.
