Heat’s Tyler Herro explains his growth, says last season ‘was probably the best thing for me’
Since Tyler Herro entered the NBA, he has pointed to Phoenix Suns star guard Devin Booker as the player he models his game after.
That hasn’t changed, as Herro did his best impression of Booker against Booker’s team in the short-handed Heat’s impressive 123-100 win over the defending Western Conference champion Suns on Saturday night at Footprint Center. Herro finished one point shy of a regular-season career-high, but set a new season-high with 33 points on 12-of-20 shooting from the field and 3-of-4 shooting on threes, five rebounds and three assists off the bench.
“Devin is somebody that I always look to,” Herro said, with the Heat now back in Miami for a three-day break before again hitting the road to complete its six-game trip on Wednesday against the Atlanta Hawks. “He’s obviously somebody that I looked up to coming into the league and somebody that I was comparing myself to. So, yeah, right now I still look at him and see what he’s doing over here in Phoenix.”
But Herro, 21, also made it clear that he’s focused on charting his own path in the NBA these days while also appreciating and studying Booker’s offensive repertoire. In Herro’s third NBA season, he’s the clear favorite for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award as the league’s top bench scorer with 20.7 points per game as a reserve.
Including Herro’s starts, he’s averaging 20.6 points while shooting 42.7 percent from the field and 38.8 percent on threes, 4.9 rebounds and 3.9 assists this season. Those numbers are up from his sophomore NBA campaign, when he averaged 15.1 points.
“I think I’m more mature,” Herro said of his improvement. “I’ve been through, not everything, but enough now to know what to expect, really. Just having a couple years under my belt, things change quickly in this league. So just being able to adjust, make adjustments on the fly, stay ready and just continuing to put the work in every single game. I’m just worrying about the end goal and the end result.”
Part of Herro’s improvement from last season is simply the fact that he’s getting more opportunities, as his shot attempts have jumped from 12.9 to 18 per game this season. But another driving force behind his growth is his ability to move past inefficient performances and slow starts to a games.
Herro shot just 25 of 86 (29.1 percent) from the field and 11 of 42 (26.2 percent) from three-point range in the four games leading up to Saturday’s 33-point display.
“I can’t get frustrated. It’s all part of the process,” Herro said. “Teams are guarding me different. My shots aren’t wide open. They’re not easy looks. Just finding new ways to attack defenses, get to my spots and then just being efficient. I take a high number of shots per game, so just trying to be efficient. That’s my biggest thing. I hate having those games like I’ve had the past three games. But just sticking with it and just remembering that everything is a part of the process.”
That’s a lesson Heat coach Erik Spoelstra believes is “really important for young players to learn.”
“How to handle adversity, how to handle things when it’s not going how you want it to go,” Spoelstra said. “It’s your response and how do you win that next possession, how do you impact the game. If you’re not in a great offensive flow, what else can you do to impact the game and help us win?
“Tyler has some great role models on the team of guys that can really move the needle on the scoreboard and can do it whether they’re scoring or not. Jimmy [Butler] and Kyle [Lowry] do that constantly. Bam [Adebayo] does that constantly. Tyler has a gift for scoring, but he’s becoming a complete basketball player.”
Herro’s role wasn’t defined last season, at least he didn’t believe it was. He began the season as a starter and then moved to the bench after starting in his first 14 appearances, and couldn’t meet the hype that he generated as a rookie sensation during the Heat’s run to the NBA Finals in the Walt Disney World bubble.
“Just coming in every single day, it was tough,” Herro said of last season. “Just not knowing what my role is. I had felt a certain way of how I see things going and then just the way that everything happened. Everything happened for a reason. So looking back at last year, it was probably the best thing for me. Coming off the bubble humbled me a little bit.”
Herro’s role is clear for the Heat this season as a sixth man who’s not being used like a typical reserve.
Herro is averaging a team-high 18 shots per game and the fourth-most minutes (32.8) behind only Adebayo, Butler and Lowry. Herro also owns a team-high usage rate (an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while on the court) of 28.8 percent this season, which is comparable to the current usage rate of stars like Chicago’s Zach LaVine (29.6 percent), Portland’s Damian Lillard (28.8 percent) and Brooklyn’s James Harden (27.6 percent).
“Tyler is a scorer, and scorers get the ball up and get shots up,” Lowry said. “They’re going to hit a couple games where they miss some shots and shots just don’t fall or legs may be a little tired. But we give Tyler the confidence to go out there and play. Whatever happens, we’re going to protect him. That’s his job is to go out there and try to score the ball.”
One Heat teammate believes there’s an outside factor that has helped Herro this season. Herro became a father in September just weeks before the start of training camp, when his daughter Zya Elise Herro was born.
“It’s different. You’re not playing for yourself anymore,” Heat team captain Udonis Haslem said. “You’re not a kid anymore, you’re not just playing for yourself and that changes things. When you go home every night and you see that little girl, she doesn’t care if you had a good game or a bad game. She just wants to spend time with her dad.”
Herro confirmed becoming a father has played a “big role” in his growth on and off the court.
“I wear her name under my arm sleeve every game and that kind of just reminds me that I’m doing this for her,” he said. “There’s a purpose behind this now and a real reason to keep me motivated every single day, every single game. That’s why I continue to play how I’m playing.”
▪ The 10-day contracts of the six COVID-19 replacements on the Heat’s roster expired this weekend. The deals of Kyle Guy, Aric Holman and Haywood Highsmith ended after Saturday’s game and those of Mario Chalmers, Chris Silva and Nik Stauskas expired on Sunday.
All are now free agents.
