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Tyler Herro elevated his play during the Eastern Conference Finals to help the Miami Heat defeat the Boston Celtics and advance to face the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals.
The 20-year-old captivated the basketball community throughout the series, specifically when he scored a career-high 37 points in a Game 4 victory. Herro set the NBA rookie playoff record for a conference finals game and now holds the Heat franchise rookie playoff scoring record.
While Herro seemingly earned praise from everyone following his performance versus the Celtics, one person is not quite as sold on him like everyone else: Future Hall of Famer Paul Pierce, who spent 15 seasons with the Celtics.
For those that didn’t see it, Pierce stirred up social media on Friday night when he refused to call Herro by his longstanding “Bucket” nickname. Pierce said that he can’t call Herro by that nickname because he only averaged “11 points” during the regular season.
He can shoot, he has a nice IQ and he got an array of moves but I can’t call nobody a ‘bucket’ if you ain’t averaging at least 20. For the course of an NBA season, if you average 11, I can’t give you ‘I’m a bucket.’ There are a lot of guys averaging 11, I can’t give you ‘I’m a bucket’ because you get a couple buckets on the big stage. … It’s a small sample size. He had a great game. I love everything that he is doing but I need a bigger sample size before I start giving out nicknames and all of this other stuff.
Leave it to Paul Pierce to rain on Tyler Herro’s playoff performance pic.twitter.com/OsrKY7WPSL
— Brendan Tobin (@Brendan_Tobin) September 26, 2020
In fairness to Herro, he actually averaged 13.5 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 55 games during the regular season. He has raised those averages to 16.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.9 assists so far during the postseason, including his career-high 37-point performance in Game 4.
On Monday, Herro responded to Pierce on the Dan Le Batard Show.
“I averaged more than 11, first of all,” Herro said. “I think I just averaged about 20 in the Eastern Conference Finals.”
Herro averaged 19.2 points during the Eastern Conference Finals, which was third-best on the team, but came up just shy of the threshold needed to use the “Bucket” nickname, at least, according to Pierce, who wants to see how Herro would respond in a bigger sample size.
Of course, Herro first earned the “Bucket” nickname in high school and it stayed with him during his lone season at Kentucky and this year in the NBA. He has emerged as one of the top rookies and is the only first-year player still making regular contributions at this stage of the playoffs.
Pierce is certainly entitled to his opinion but his comments sound a bit sour coming from a player watching his former team, who was favored over the Heat, come up just short of reaching the NBA Finals.
Pierce has also been getting lit up lately from Dwyane Wade and Draymond Green so there is that, too…
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