The returns have been enormous so far-and they could get even bigger for the Heat, in the pursuit of this year’s title and the next few after it. At the end of the day, it’s just betting on myself.” I went from a small town in Milwaukee to Kentucky, and nobody thought I would survive there and nobody thought I would survive here. “I’m just going to bet on myself,” Herro told reporters after Game 4.
But be honest: With the run Miami’s on, and the boundless confidence oozing out of this kid’s every pore, how much would you be willing to wager that he won’t? The odds are against Herro doing this again to close the Celtics out. “I think everybody overestimates what you can do in a day, and they underestimate what you can do in months of work and sweat and grind, when nobody is watching,” Spoelstra said Wednesday.Įverybody’s going to be watching now-waiting to see if the kid’s got an encore in store to end Boston’s season and send the Heat to a Finals appearance that few would’ve predicted six months ago. This is the type of company that Herro’s put himself in with all that self-belief and all that work. And after his Game 4 explosion, only seven players have scored as many points in a single game this postseason: two MVPs, four All-Stars, and Murray, who’s playing like he belongs in that sort of rarefied air. Only Adebayo, Butler, and Dragic have logged more minutes for Miami this postseason only Adebayo and Butler have played more against Boston. That combination, along with continued improvement on the other end-specifically as a possession-ending rebounder he’s got the fifth-highest defensive rebound rate of any guard this postseason-has earned him the trust of his teammates and coaches at the most pressure-packed time of year. All that studying has paid off handsomely: Herro has taken a major leap forward since play resumed in Orlando, scoring more, doing so more efficiently, and looking significantly more comfortable handling the ball and creating off the dribble.
Throughout the hiatus, Heat assistant coach Chris Quinn fed Herro video clips so that he could study stuff like “how Ray Allen moves without the ball,” “how Steve Nash manipulates the defense in pick-and-roll,” and “how Devin Booker and CJ McCollum operate as both playmakers and scorers with the ball in their hands,” according to Couper Moorhead of. (That Herro’s breakthrough performance came one night after Murray buried the Lakers in the latest dazzling outing of his watershed postseason is a serendipitous bit of coincidence.) But some inconsistent play on both ends and a month on the shelf with a right ankle injury derailed the rookie the league’s suspension due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic allowed him to both get fully healthy and focus on off-court development. Herro carved out a role in Spoelstra’s rotation’s last fall as a 19-year-old and proved he could be an instant contributor on a damn good Heat team, producing a statistical profile that compared favorably to the first-year output of dynamic scorers like Buddy Hield and Jamal Murray.
Jamal Murray’s Shooting Leap and More Stats-Based Conference Finals Observations The NBA Mid-Playoffs Survey Miami Already Has One Foot in the Finals After starting all 37 games for John Calipari as a freshman, earning SEC Newcomer of the Year honors, and becoming the 13th pick in the 2019 NBA draft, Herro entered the league rocking this fit: This is a young man who shrugged off death threats in his home state of Wisconsin after decommitting from the Badgers because he knew-unmistakably, unflinchingly, in his bones-that he belonged at a blue blood like Kentucky. It also, however, represents precisely the sort of performance that Herro wholeheartedly believes himself capable of every time he takes the court. 1 defense stands as the pinnacle of his basketball career to date when you set a rookie record for most points ever in the conference finals and join Magic Johnson as the highest-scoring 20-year-olds in playoff history, it seems safe to say that’s something of a high point. Herro’s relentless scorching of the postseason’s no. That rim must have looked like the ocean to him.” the difference in the game,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said of the rookie, who finished 14-of-21 from the field and 5-of-10 from 3-point range.
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