"How are you gonna score 20 in that type of stress? In that sense, to be honest with you, I felt like it was a little unfair, the situation he was put in." "I remember games where he was playing 16, 20 minutes, in that range," Robinson says. It wasn't his fault, necessarily, but we just needed to stabilize as a team." "We got off to a slow start," says Duncan Robinson, Herro's teammate. A 7-14 start, most notably without Butler, and a benching were all the evidence his detractors needed. Those who believed Herro's time in Orlando, Florida, was the beginning of a blossoming franchise player were forced to question how far a Herro-led team could go. Whatever goodwill Herro had built from his electrifying performance in the bubble had evaporated. "I told him, as he was struggling through it, this is a really important process for you, just to learn all the spots on the floor, the responsibilities of initiating offense, of getting the ball where it needs to go, and then determining when you can be assertive." It was a lot more responsibilities and he couldn't just play to his instincts. where I played him as our backup point guard, was really important for him," Spoelstra says. Still, Spoelstra piled on the responsibilities even after Herro returned from his bench role, expecting the guard to develop his game and maintain starter-level production all in a reduced role. "The locker room just wasn't the same."Įntering the season, Herro had earned a spot in the starting lineup, but 15 games in, he was benched in favor of Goran Dragic. "I was 20, and I was in the locker room, I'm thinking we're running it back trying to get back to the Finals," Herro says. There was a different feel to an exhausted team coming off a sixth Finals appearance in franchise history, and hungry for more. It started with what was a brief six-week "offseason" for a player expected to take a significant leap. Instead, the quick turnaround and shortened 2020-21 season provided greater challenges for Herro. What followed after the basketball-only comfort of the Walt Disney World bubble was supposed to be a fairy-tale epilogue. Herro backed up some of Butler's claims during a pandemic-interrupted debut season, most notably with a 37-point performance against the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals and snarl-worthy moments in the Heat's six-game loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals. And we need him to be that going forward in the playoffs and as we make this run."īUTLER SERVES AS a great starting point when telling Herro's story, because it was Butler's constant promotion of Herro as a confident, NBA-ready hooper his rookie season that first placed Herro on the national radar. "But he's grown since he came into the league. "Obviously he has the ball a lot of the time, and obviously when someone does have the ball that much, you trust in them to take the right shots, which he does, and get everybody involved, which he does. On a team with Butler, Kyle Lowry and Bam Adebayo, it's Herro who provides the most effortless offense - a three-level threat no one else on the roster can match. As the most natural scorer on a deep Heat team, the 22-year-old reserve is most suited to unlocking a Miami offense that has been the source of consternation late in the season, and late in games all season. Now in his third year, with a breakthrough regular season behind him and probable Sixth Man of the Year award ahead, Herro is playing in these playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks as possibly the most important player on the No. Inside the arena on this Monday in March, Herro starts his night against the Sacramento Kings by modeling that springy jump shot, floating slightly to his right and nailing a 3-pointer from the "Ray Allen corner."īy the finish of this Heat win, which ends a tumultuous four-game losing streak that featured a sideline shouting match between Jimmy Butler, Udonis Haslem and Erik Spoelstra, Herro had dropped in a few more 3s on his way to 20 points, six assists and five boards. JUST ACROSS THE street from FTX Arena, on a billboard space that was regularly occupied by Dwyane Wade during his legendary Miami Heat tenure, Tyler Herro is all angles, pictured in a Hudson Jeans advertisement dribbling a basketball, wearing a short-sleeved black T-shirt, ripped black jeans and black boots. How Tyler Herro fuels the best version of the Miami Heat: 'Last year was the aberration, not this year' You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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