Rebel With Cause: Tyler Herro Looked In The Mirror And Was Willing To Change The Player Looking Back
It’s the fourth quarter of an early November game against Sacramento and Tyler Herro is about to come off a run-of-the-mill screen set by Bam Adebayo.
There’s daylight for a quick shot if Herro wants it, Domantas Sabonis sitting back in drop coverage, but as De’Aaron Fox fights over the top of the pick Herro hesitates for a moment, framing his body to get Fox stuck in proverbial defender jail. Fox counters, taking the long way around Herro’s body as he navigates his way back in front by the time Herro gets a foot in the paint. Herro goes for the pump fake and Fox doesn’t bite, but feeling contact Herro goes for the quick shot. Fox quickly pulls his arm back. No call. The shot misses. The game moves on.
What was noteworthy about that play wasn’t the impact it had on a clutch game. It wasn’t about whether the shot went in or not, or whether there could have been a call.
Instead, it was a noteworthy play because it used to be an entirely ordinary sequence of events for Herro. It used to be the sort of shot you wouldn’t think twice about. But in that game against Sacramento, it was the only true mid-range jumper Herro took the entire night.
That missed shot was the exception to the today’s new rule, the last vestige of an older version of Herro who has since updated his entire operating system. The sort of shot Herro and Chris Quinn have a conversation about after every game during their nightly check-in.
“I can only think of a couple of what you may call questionable shots this season,” Quinn says. “Right away after the game if I ask, he’s well aware, like, ‘That was the one.’ One game his intention was right, he tried to draw a foul on a pull-up mid-range and they didn’t call it so then he said, ‘That wasn’t a good shot.’
A shot like the one against Fox lives in a bit of a gray area since Herro’s intention was to draw a foul, but that truth is almost beside the point. A shot like the one against Fox, once the most mundane component of Herro’s arsenal, is now one which requires a conversation, however brief, now that Herro has recalibrated his scales for right and wrong with the ball in his hands.
The result is a brand-new shot profile, coming along in its wake career-best efficiency and, more plainly, more points on the same volume of shots, but the process required Herro to make wholesale changes to the way he thinks about himself.
Talk to Me
The first conversation happened before the season. Before last season.
When Herro and Erik Spoelstra sat down for an “extensive” dialogue in 2023, the issue, such as it was, was not one of understanding or comprehension. When it came to optimizing his shot profile, cutting out the low-hanging mid-range fruit, the math checked out.
“He’s smart and he could understand, intellectually, that a more efficient profile would help and also help him,” Spoelstra says. “It should be a win-win. It shouldn’t just be, ‘Hey, we’re benefitting and you’re not.’ You want players to also feel that they can fully express themselves and their ambition.”
Herro had just finished his first season as a full-time starter, averaging 20.1 points a night on 25 percent usage to go with a 56.6 true-shooting percentage. He had also missed nearly the entirety of Miami’s surprise run to the NBA Finals as a No. 8 seed, breaking his hand in Game 1 of the First Round against the Milwaukee Bucks. After that run ended in a 4-1 defeat to the Denver Nuggets, Herro had noted how many of the team Miami had faced that played primarily out of drop coverage in pick-and-roll, the exact coverage Herro took pride in punishing with his ability to shoot off the dribble. Herro sat in street clothes while a chance passed him by.
“That was really heartbreaking for me because I was going to have a big playoffs and then that happened,” Herro said that offseason. “I just want that opportunity. In the playoffs, bright lights on the big stage. That’s what I’m about.”
“I just saw so much opportunity for me to do my thing and help the team win.”
To do his thing. Herro sounded more like a player eager to prove who he was, not change who he could be. Nobody could fault him for that, either. Winning Sixth Man of the Year as a 22-year old and then translating that same success to a starting lineup full of veterans was a worthy accomplishment. As his name circulated in trade rumors throughout the summer of 2023, his “value”, so to speak, became a topic of continuous debate on a national level. In the face of all that noise, anyone could understand a player taking a ‘Watch What I Can Do’ approach to his return to the court.
Ambition is a feature, not a bug.
“That ambition is a superpower,” Spoelstra said. “I don’t ever want to squelch that.
“He wanted to showcase all of his skills. To be able to create off the dribble, not just only be an on-the-move, catch-and-shoot player. That’s OK. I don’t judge him for having great ambition.”
Still, Spoelstra deals in wins and losses, and little impacts that part of the ledger more than efficiency. Wherever Herro was in his career, whatever the narrative was – either the one he created for himself or the one being created for him by outside forces – his coach saw an opportunity to make gains. And so, they sat down and talked.
“I didn’t give him a math class, just trying to relate to him as somebody that could help him with our coaching experience to cultivate that ambition,” Spoelstra said.
“They were pushing him to take a real look at [his shot profile] and grow within that,” says Kevin Love.
“If you simplify it, it’s like, ‘Coach wants me to score more points,’” Bam Adebayo said.
The message was delivered but not, at least not at that point, fully received and put into action.
“At first it was a tough conversation for me to take in because I feel like I’ve been successful playing the way I’ve played for pretty much my whole career,” Herro said of his feelings coming out of that conversation. “Scoring wise my numbers were not horribly inefficient. My first five years I still feel like I was above average efficiency when I look across the league at other guys at my position.”
Herro remained receptive, but by the time Miami got to their 2023-24 regular season slate, little changed. He was still a 20-point scorer, his usage raising slightly as his efficiency dropped but all remained well within career norms. His threes attempted per 100 possessions remained flat while his rates for both rim attempts and free throws actually dropped by a few ticks.
Still a good player, just not meaningfully different despite marginal gains in assist percentage.
“It’s your competitive instincts,” Spoelstra said. “Once you get into competition you get into some of your comfort zones.”
Meaning in Losing
A decade from now, few will remember Miami’s First Round loss to the Boston Celtics last April. For most, it was about as unceremonious a five-game series could be. With both Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier absent each loss came by double digits, the HEAT’s lone victory powered by a franchise postseason high 23 threes (on 43 attempts) – the only note from those two weeks worthy of the record books.
And yet something clicked for Herro during that series, during a Game 2 win.
Herro’s first shot in that game was a three. As was his second. His third. His fourth. When Boston gave him room with drop coverage, either Kristaps Porzingis or Al Horford sitting back behind the arc in an attempted to bait out the mid-ranger, he took a three. When they switched, he still took a three. It wasn’t until early in the fourth quarter that Herro attempted his first two pointer. He finished with 24 points on 13 shots. Only two of those attempts came inside the arc. Just one in the mid-range.
“As I started to mature and then went through the Boston series last year, I think that helped a lot just waking me up as far as my shot profile for one, but also just the difficulty of my shots,” Herro says. “I feel like I was making the game hard on myself.”
Even with his famous 37-point breakout in Game 4 against the Celtics during his rookie season, Boston had notoriously been a difficult team for Herro to figure out. Throughout the various iterations of the Celtics during Herro’s career, they’ve long had an arsenal of long, switchy defenders that could reduce Herro’s approach to isolations against wings who were bigger and stronger than him. Among Eastern Conference opponents, Herro’s scoring average against Boston (15.8 points) during the regular season was above only his performance against the Orlando Magic – another team with bigger, mobile wings – and his true-shooting percentage against Boston (50.7) only better than what he had posted against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Sure, Boston was running a bit more drop coverage than usual with Porzingis in tow last year, but when you watch Herro’s Game 2 it’s as easy as anything had ever looked against that group.
“The playoffs were the biggest thing that moved the needle,” Spoelstra said. “He had big responsibilities for us to generate offense against a really good defensive team. They have some of the best one-on-one defenders and it’s tough to break them down. But when you put Tyler on the move, the best he looked in that series when he was a moving target and putting them in the popcorn machine and creating confusion. It really resonated with him after that series and he just went to work.”
Once the series ended, the games already a faded memory for most, Spoelstra again sat down with Herro, ready to revisit the topic of shot profile. This time, the conversation was brief. Herro was finishing Spoelstra’s sentences for him.
“He already knew what he needed to work on,” Spoelstra says.
The Golden Path
Coach John Calipari had a rule at The University of Kentucky. No matter who collected the defensive rebound, they had to get the ball to the point guard and run up the floor. As Herro was not a point guard, he spent much of his sole collegiate year without the ball in his hands, developing a skillset that would prove itself invaluable years into his professional career.
“There aren’t many players that are coming into the league that know how to play off the ball,” Spoelstra says. “He can, he did that in college. That’s a great, underrated skill. It’s hard to guard because there’s less and less of it coming into this league. So much more of it is dominated by an angle pick-and-roll and you play out of a switch or a drop. Those are the reads.”
There’s a prototype, of sorts, for what an All-Star guard looks like in the NBA. Thousands of dribbles. Thousands of pick-and-rolls. Beating your man one-on-one. Scoring at all three levels, where mid-range pullups have long since become the claimed territory of primary creators. That’s the road many have walked before, the road many will walk in years to come. Herro’s ambitions started him on that journey
Elsewhere in the league, there’s a more unique path. One available only to those with a very specific set of skills, with the right footwork, the right motor – and more than a little self-awareness.
“The guys who shoot the mid-range shots efficiently and do it well are the ones that are like, 6’9”, 6’10”, 6’11”,” Herro says. “Like [Kevin Durant] . . . can shoot over the top of guys from the mid-range and make it an efficient shot.
“I feel like with my body type and the way I play, it’s like Steph Curry. I try to make my shot profile as identical to Steph as possible. Steph shoots a lot of threes obviously, the rest of them are to the rim, layups and free throws. That’s kind of what I’m trying to resemble is literally what Steph’s doing.”
Herro says he would look at Curry’s box scores and notice that Curry would go entire halves taking almost nothing but threes. He and Quinn would watch Curry film together, including clips from the Paris Olympics, and Herro thought about how he could play off Adebayo the same way Curry does Draymond Green – while still finding ways to accentuate Adebayo’s greater offensive skillset. Herro even compared his own shot profile to Curry’s a few weeks ago, noting that they were “literally damn near the exact same”. Sure enough, the percentage of Herro’s shots that come from three or at the rim (78.1 percent) is nearly bang-on with Curry’s (76.9 percent).
“He has a motor offensively that’s a little bit unique,” Suns coach Mike Budenholzer said recently. “You cannot stop or relax. There’s some of the way Steph Curry can play, the handoffs and the getting it back, the giving it up and chasing it.”
It's not that Herro thinks he can be Curry. There’s too much respect for that. What matters is the intention to try and be like Curry, to emulate a very specific kind of greatness, to chase the facsimile.
“Obviously Steph’s probably the greatest shooter of all time and does it in a variety of ways,” Quinn said. “He’s not just a spot-up guy, he’s not just an off-the-dribble guy, he’s not just a movement guy, he can make those threes in all different ways which is something Tyler can do too.”
The results of the new approach almost speak for themselves. The best scoring year of Herro’s career. The most efficient year of his career. Pullup two-pointers at a career low (just 1.3 per 100 possessions). Driving layups, pullup three-pointers and free-throws at career highs. His efficiency in shots taken after two or more dribbles, once a mark on his ledger, is at an all-time high, his effective field-goal percentage on those shot over 50 for the first time as his points-per isolation have skyrocketed from 0.98 to 1.19. His frequency of long mid-range shots has dropped from 13.3 percent to a barely noticeable 2.6 percent. There is a time and place for those in-between looks that stars take, particularly in fourth quarters when the chance of a single shot going in outweighs the potential for greater efficiency over time, and Herro has his fingers confidently on the dial and his eyes on the clock.
“In the first three quarters I don’t even think about shooting [from mid-range] honestly,” Herro says. “I just try to get to my ****, which is layups and threes.”
Buzz cut aside, Herro still looks the same and moves the same, his dancer’s feet on the move would still fit as well in Singin’ In The Rain as a basketball game, and if you only watched his highlights those short clips may not look all that different. But watch Herro for a full 48 minutes and the process is nigh unrecognizable. He plays like a new man in the same body, Paul Atreides after he drank the Water of Life.
It's all worth a brief pause, if only for a moment, to consider what really took place. Yes, Herro’s changes are all rooted in the math of the game, in shot values and percentages – even if they fall back to career norms the new profile will keep his true-shooting at his all-time high – but at the heart of this story is a 24-year-old father of two who was willing to take a hard look at himself, at the success which had already earned him a significant second contract at the highest level, and accept the truth of what he saw, of the changes available to him outside of his comfort zone. Even if it’s not world-saving work, it’s a step many don’t take until their 30’s, if ever.
“It’s a huge testament to him,” says Duncan Robinson. “He’s already been a dynamic, three-level scorer in this league and a big part of it is buying into what we’re trying to do as a team. Understanding that it’s really about sacrifice for him. Maybe at first not really seeing how it’s ultimately going to benefit him and us, but now you’re seeing him realize that and the confidence that he already has, the scalability that he already has, is compounding to really be dynamic.”
“It’s difficult and it’s a real sign of maturity for Tyler that he’s gotten to this point,” Quinn adds. “He’s always been able to do anything offensively on the basketball court. Sometimes we look at a player sometimes as a shooter or an attacker or a scorer, but Tyler is able to do all of it. He had to wrap his mind around three-point shooting as a part of that and not that he’s just a shooter or just a scorer, and how he can tie it all together. I think once he figured that out is really when he took a big jump.”
The Second Level
What comes next, rather what could come next, has nothing to do with Herro’s own shots.
The part of that Game 2 in Boston that we haven’t mentioned is that Herro also had 14 assists that night, a career high for any game, postseason or otherwise. Much of that came from Miami’s shooters making everything they put up and Boston’s defense making some questionable decisions when it came to rotations, help and closeouts, but Herro made all the plays that were right in front of him, a glimpse of the player he could be on any night, not just a special one. Herro is already posting a career-high assist percentage, the cherry on top of his incredible start to the season, but from here it’s about seeing the plays behind the defense, the skip passes that beat the rotations before they begin, the manipulation which carves out a playmaking lane from nothing.
Some of it is happening already, glimpses coming from his pace and patience when teams run him off the arc. Some of it will only come to pass as more teams show how they will adjust their scouting reports for Herro’s new game. The real test will be postseason games, the adjustments to the adjustments, the counters to the counters. Can Herro be the HEAT player who consistently draws two to the ball, who becomes the engine, not just a major component, of a high-powered, elite offense?
“The next step, which he’s already improving, is the playmaking aspect,” Quinn says. “Whatever the defense does is wrong basically. If you’re going to put more guys on me, I’m going to get an assist or make the right play for the team, then I’m going to have my spurts where I have 15 or 20 in a quarter. That’s the next step where he can balance that ability to score and playmake for the team. To make the right play over and over and over again is what makes the great players great.”
Greatness is assuredly well within the scope of Herro’s endless ambitions. He says he wants to be an All-Star – he’ll have his best chance to date playing like this – and he wants to win. Time will tell the story of whether he reaches greatness, true greatness that is remembered long after your final game, and Herro has never been as close to touching it.
“He knows he’s that guy,” says Jimmy Butler.
Whatever comes next, you chronicle the difficult path already trod. Herro could have stayed true to his ways, stuck in them from a certain point of view. Instead, he found his cause. Found the change he could be. The status quo he’s bucking may only be one of his own creation, his rebellion a personal revolution, but your on-court fate remains only in what gains you can capture for yourself. In just a few months, Herro has already seized an entire fistful. Now we can only watch as he reaches for a few more.