Earlier today, Woj reported that guard Tyler Herro has agreed to a four-year, $130 million contract extension with the Heat.
Herro was the 13th overall pick in the 2019 class. As we all know, 13 is a very lucky and special number for shooting guards, it is the pick of the great Kobe Bryant entering the league, and it is also a borderline pick between the lottery pick and the average rookie. Players who enter the league with this order may be destined to have a sense of crisis that may fall out of rotation at any time from the very beginning of their careers, and they also need a kind of self-motivation to fight for a position at any time in order to survive.
But this special pick has also shaped a group of players who are tough and fearless. In addition to the legendary Kobe Bryant, the 13th pick has produced many outstanding talents in the league over the years. LaVine, Mitchell, and Booker were all selected in this draft, and they all became leaders of their respective teams through the baptism of actual combat.
Similar to his predecessors, Shiro has already experienced the pressure test beyond his peers. During college, because he did not choose the University of Wisconsin in his hometown, but joined the famous Kentucky, Hero was labeled as “anti-bone”. Before the start of the draft, because of his unremarkable static indicators and limited athletic talent, Hero was also classified as “overvalued” early on.
However, in his rookie season, Herro quickly took his place on the bench with his efficiency and productivity. That season, he averaged 13.5 points per game as a freshman and shot 38.9 percent from beyond the arc. The playoffs in the isolation bubble that year became the highlight of Herro’s career. That year, he reached the finals with the Heat, and he also increased his scoring average to 16+. In addition, Herro scored in double figures in the first 20 games of his playoff career, which is also a rare record in the history of the Heat and even the history of the NBA.
The rookie season quickly became popular, making Herro gradually become the focus of the Heat. However, in the second season of his career, Herro hit the belated rookie wall. His career once fell into a bottleneck that was difficult to break through, and the pace of progress slowed down significantly. He even lost the coaching staff’s trust during the season and his name was on the trade shelves.
One point of view is that Hero played a mature game early on that is different from most rookies. Of course, this is related to his diligence and precocity, but the underpinning effect of the Heat’s strong team and strict system cannot be ignored. But is Herro’s talent ceiling also revealed prematurely because of his rookie season fame? This is also what some people in the industry are worried about.
But just when all the doubts hit his face like a tide, last summer, Hiro chose to dive and retreat. Taking advantage of the precious time in the offseason, he has a comprehensive reflection on his career and a new understanding of his own stadium positioning.
After the start of last season, Herro re-emerged with amazing potential. This time, he sticks to his role as the sixth man with peace of mind and becomes the most reliable offensive “microwave oven” for the Heat. Almost from the beginning of the season, Herro was firmly at the top of the league’s best sixth man list, and easily secured the award at the end of the season.
Throughout the regular season, Herro averaged 20.7 points and 4 assists per game, and his three-point shooting percentage was 39.9%, all of which set a new career high. In terms of high-level data, he averaged a PER of 16.2 points, a win share of 3.8 points, and a possession rate of 28.8%. The three figures are also career new records. In most of the games, although Hero was on the bench, his value was far beyond the scope of a sixth man.
Earlier, it was reported that Herro would enter the Heat’s starting lineup in the new season. Now, he has won a 4-year contract extension with the parent team of over 100 million yuan. Although the price of the contract has not reached the maximum salary, for Hero and the Heat, the conclusion of this agreement is basically a win-win result.
Before Herro, young people in the 2019 class, including Zion Williamson, Morant, Barrett, and Darius Garland, also completed early renewals. Today, Herro joins the ranks of the Class of 19 elite.
Of course, for Herro, renewing the contract with the Heat is just a new starting point. In the new season, he may have even greater ambitions. With the gradual aging of Butler, Lowry and others, in the new season (at least in the regular season), the scene of the second and the old delegating power to rest is likely to occur frequently. Conventional logic believes that Hero’s role will continue to improve because of this. And if all goes well, it is not impossible for him to take over the “scepter” from Butler and be promoted to the team’s top scorer, and then copy the upper-level script of the 13th show… (Poirot)Return to Sohu, see more
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