Don't look now but Tyler Herro is playing like an All-Star
The summer of 2023 was the closest we’ve come to an actual Tyler Herro trade happening, as the Miami Heat went through intense negotiations with the Portland Trail Blazers for star lead guard Damian Lillard.
For Miami, trying to pull off such a deal had more to do with wanting Lillard, coming off a spectacular 3rd Team All-NBA, 32.2-point-per-game campaign, rather than just wanting to offload Herro. After all, the Heat have always held the former Kentucky standout in high regard, higher even than portions of the fanbase that had grown frustrated with his lack of defense, streaky scoring and availability – or lack thereof.
Eventually, as history has it, the trade fell through as Lillard was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks and Herro remained with Miami. Fans in South Florida felt a sense of disappointment with how the whole Lillard saga with Portland went, and if fans were frustrated, Heat brass probably felt even more indignation about how the ordeal eventually culminated.
But thus far in 2024-25, the Heat may feel some sense of relief that the trade didn't happen, as Herro is making a charge at the first All-Star bid of his career, with the 24-year-old looking to have hit a higher level in his game.
So far, Tyler Herro is living up to previous praise from Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra
Just this past offseason, Miami’s Hall-of-Fame shot-caller Pat Riley offered high praise for Herro, even coming off a season in which the 24-year-old had missed 40 games and failed to show much upward growth from his prior two years, saying:
The faith that the Heat’s two most important minds have always shown in the former Sixth Man of the Year has paid off fully thus far in 2024-25, with Herro playing like he’s very much deserving of his first career All-Star appearance this year.
Of course, we are getting ahead of ourselves, as this NBA season isn’t even a quarter of the way over yet. Herro’s hot shooting could cool off; he could revert back to poor old habits; or his injury troubles of the past could sprout up again. But the way Herro is getting his buckets – the areas from which he’s shooting, the efficiency with which the ball is going through the basket, his improved decision-making – all make us think the still-young 2-guard has figured out how to hit the next level in his game this year after three seasons’ worth of stagnation.
Tyler Herro ranks very highly in various advanced metrics....
Herro is averaging a career-high 24.2 points per game this season. He’s play-making better than ever, putting up a career-best 5.2 assists nightly. And his shooting accuracy has been outrageously efficient, with Herro converting a career-high rate from the field (48.6 percent shooting) and from three (45.2 percent from three, the No. 4 mark in the NBA among players with at least 80 three-point attempts this season).
As a result, Herro is beloved by advanced analytics this year for seemingly the first time in his career, with the 6-foot-5 guard ranking 20th league-wide in Value Over Replacement Player (ahead of the likes of Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards and Devin Booker, some of his toughest counterparts at the position), 23rd in Box Plus/Minus (one spot behind Luka Doncic) and 37th in Win Shares per 48 Minutes (one spot ahead of Lillard, the player he was almost traded for) in a metric that usually favors the contributions of big men. (For proof, just note that as of Tuesday, Nov. 19, Dallas Mavericks center Daniel Gafford ranks second in that stat. Second overall in the entire NBA, that is.)
And in our own Global Rating metric, Herro also ranks among the Top 30 players in the league this season, just trailing Team USA gold medalist Derrick White and the Sacramento Kings’ do-everything center Domantas Sabonis.
Herro’s excellent placing in various advanced metrics doesn’t just have to do with the accuracy of his shot-making – which has been extremely impressive this year, especially considering Herro is forced to take a bundle of difficult shots nightly – but also with where he is deciding to take his shot attempts from.
This season, 14.1 percent of Herro’s shot attempts have come from within three feet of the basket, the second-highest clip of his career. Even more importantly, just 5.9 percent of his field-goal attempts have from within 10 to 16 feet from the basket, the lowest rate of his career, and an even more minuscule 1.4 percent have come from 16 feet from the basket to the three-point line, likewise the lowest total from his time in the NBA.
That means Herro is now neglecting the least efficient shot in basketball, the long two, in favor of three-pointers and, to a lesser extent, shots near the rim. (It’s probably a good thing Herro's shooting 57.3 of his shots from beyond the arc, the highest total of his career, as opposed to 14.1 percent of his shots coming from near the rim considering he’s an excellent three-point shooter and an average-at-best finisher around the basket. Herro is converting on just 51.9 percent of his shot attempts from within five feet of the basket this year.)
The young 2-guard is shooting the ball at Curry levels this season....
And that confidence in his abilities as a three-point shooter has paid off handsomely for Herro, as out of the 20 players this season shooting at least eight three-pointers per contest, the Heat guard ranks second in three-point accuracy at 45.2 percent, trailing only the Golden State Warriors’ Buddy Hield (46.2 percent) and two-and-a-half percentage points higher than a certain teammate of Hield’s named Stephen Curry, who is at 42.7 percent accuracy from three so far this season.
The one thing Herro has never lacked is confidence, so it’s good to see that confidence be rewarded. And why not be confident if you’re Herro? His jumper is picture-perfect, with a smooth follow-through and a high release point making him difficult to contest, so why shouldn’t he be launching nearly double-digit threes nightly? Just look at some of the shots he was making on his 40-point, 10-for-17-from-three night against the Detroit Pistons back on Nov. 12:
Give Herro a sliver of space and he is going to make you pay. That would explain why the Heat are so willing to let their 2-guard cook, feeding him copious opportunities out of dribble hand-offs and off screens, two areas in which he has shined this season because they give him space to shoot. Herro ranks in the NBA’s 87th percentile this season in points per possession (PPP) on shot attempts off of screens at 1.31 PPP, ahead of Curry’s 1.29 PPP in the same play type. And he sits in the league’s 89th percentile out of hand-off opportunities at 1.22 PPP, just ahead of New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson.
The fact that he’s such a deadly pull-up shooter has also greatly aided Herro this year because when his teammates screen for him and he gets to take on a backpedaling big man on defense, he is able to stop on a dime, rise and shoot from the short midrange and knock down shots. According to NBA.com, Herro is hitting an extremely tidy 63.1 percent of his pull-up jumpers this season. That’s ahead of Kyrie Irving (61.2 percent) and Chris Paul (62.3 percent), both of whom will be going into the Hall of Fame one day in large part thanks to their pull-up-shooting prowess.
What areas of improvement are there still for Tyler Herro?
Of course, there are areas in which Herro could still improve, and not just with his finishing near the basket. Herro is attempting a career-high 3.8 free throws per game and boasting a career-best 22.7 percent free-throw rate, but those are still very low marks for a player who is supposed to be a star-level scorer.
In fact, the one thing separating Herro from that star pack of bucket-getters is his inability to draw free throws. His free-throw rate ranks 136th in the NBA, just ahead of Lu Dort and behind his own teammate Nikola Jovic, who has a 17.8 percent usage rate compared to Herro’s 27.3 percent. For reference, even in what has been somewhat of a ho-hum campaign for Lillard so far, his free-throw rate is still at 42.9 percent (Herro's is under 23 percent, remember?), as the future Hall-of-Famer is getting to the foul line 7.6 times per game and hitting 90.5 percent of his freebies, two marks that are keeping his efficiency afloat as he shoots 43.4 percent from the floor and 32.7 percent from three this season.
For Herro to reach that next tier of player, he’s going to have to get crafty around the basket on the rare occasions he gets down there, and he’s going to have to learn how to bump into opponents and draw whistles.
What’s more, the Heat have been a shocking 12.1 points per 100 possessions worse with Herro on the floor this season, a troubling mark that at least partly explains Miami being 6-7 through 13 games. But a lot of that can be attributed to Herro’s clunky fit with Heat starting point guard Terry Rozier, who plays similarly to Herro, just at a much lower level. The fact that Jimmy Butler has been in and out of the lineup with injury hasn’t helped with regard to Herro’s poor swing rating, either.
Can Tyler Herro be an All-Star this season?
Even so, despite his lack of getting to the line, by a lot of metrics – VORP, BPM and own Global Rating – Herro has been among the 30 best players in the NBA this season. And if it weren’t for him, Miami would without a doubt be sitting a whole lot worse than 6-7 right now. Herro’s placing in overall analytic rankings put him right on that fringe for being selected an All-Star, which would be the first such honor of his career.
His own teammate, Bam Adebayo, thinks Herro is deserving of the honor:
“He’s having a hell of a year,” Adebayo said of Herro. “He deserves that All Star nod. We’ve been pushing him for three or four years to get that nod. He’s healthy, playing at his own pace, making decisions, making plays.”
Whether he gets there or not this year will largely come down to how hot he remains with his shooting. That’s not to say we think he’s going to cool off to some ridiculous extent, but at least a slight regression to his career mean has to be expected.
Nevertheless, after years of battling against injuries and trade rumors, it’s been fun to see Herro silence naysayers almost out of nowhere this season and play like a potential NBA All-Star. It looks like the No. 13 overall pick from the 2019 draft has finally taken the next step in his game.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Don't look now but Tyler Herro is playing like an All-Star
