What Heat’s Tyler Herro is doing better than most Sixth Men of Year in NBA history
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 1989-90.
So Herro is positioned not only to win the award but produce a single-season 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 three-time 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 three seasons. He averaged 15.5 and 20.0 points the other two seasons that he won the award.
Some Sixth Man winners have approached Herro’s scoring average in the year they won it, including Jason Terry (19.6 in 2008-09), Manu Ginobili (19.5 in 2007-08), and McHale, who won the award the second and third year of its existence with averages of 18.4 and 19.8 points per game.
The past two winners of the award -- Montrezl Harrell and Jordan Clarkson -- averaged 18.6 and 18.4 points those two seasons.
Harden averaged 16.8 points in the one season that he won the award, before later becoming a starter.
The first Sixth Man winner, former Philadelphia 76ers forward Bobby Jones in 1982-83, averaged 9.0 points, one of two winners who averaged less than 10 points per game in winning the award.
The other: Anthony Mason, who averaged 9.9 points and 8.4 rebounds when he won it in 1994-95.
As the season has unfolded, “I think Tyler figured out that we need him to get 18-to-25 points for us to be a successful group long-term,” Kyle Lowry said.
And Herro has done it pretty efficiently, shooting 44.7 percent from the field and 39.9 on three-pointers, while averaging 5.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists.
Despite being limited to 66 games overall (with 56 coming off the bench), Herro is just the third player since 1975 to score at least 25 points off the bench in at least 20 games in a single season, joining Pierce (who did it twice) and Bailey.
He also recently passed Dwyane Wade’s record for most points off the bench by a Heat player in a season.
Williams and Crawford are the only players to win the Sixth Man award more than twice. McHale, Schrempf and Pierce are the only players who have won the award exactly twice.
Whether Herro gets the chance to win another remains to be seen, with Erik Spoelstra’s lineup decisions next fall - and the Heat’s 2022-23 roster construction - set to shape that decision.
Herro has embraced the sixth man role but has said, when asked over the past two years, that starting is his longterm goal.
Asked last month by ESPN’s Malika Andrews if he believes he deserves the Sixth Man award, he said: “That’s for you guys to decide, but I believe so. There’s a bunch of great bench players, but at this point I feel like I’ve done my part. I’m on the best team, and I should be Sixth Man of the Year.”
Though The Athletic’s John Hollinger, a former Memphis Grizzlies executive, made a case this past week for Cleveland’s Kevin Love to win the award, that would be surprising. TNT’s Stan Van Gundy, among others, has said Herro is clearly the most deserving candidate.
Besides Herro and Love, others who could receive top three votes include Charlotte’s Harrell and Kelly Oubre and Utah’s Clarkson.
Among other potential awards, Herro stands as a long-shot for the NBA’s Most Improved Player award and Erik Spoelstra is an underdog to win Coach of the Year for the first time.
Memphis’ Ja Morant and Desmond Bane, Orlando’s Cole Anthony, San Antonio’s Dejounte Murray, Charlotte’s Miles Bridges, Golden State’s Jordan Poole, Herro and Cleveland’s Darius Garland are all contenders for most improved.
Memphis’ Taylor Jenkins and Phoenix’s Monty Williams are top contenders for Coach of the Year, with Cleveland’s J.B. Bickerstaff also likely to warrant consideration and Spoelstra likely to receive some top-three votes.
Bam Adebayo is considered an underdog for Defensive Player of the Year. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Rudy Gobert are considered the favorites, with Adebayo, Mikal Bridges, Marcus Smart and Draymond Green likely to receive some second- and third-place votes.
This story was originally published April 9, 2022 at 11:16 AM.
