Tyler Herro is better than NBA teams thought, but not every team is the Heat

How did Herro drop to 13th overall in the 2019 draft?

After Tyler Herro dropped 37 (!!!!!) points on the Boston Celtics Wednesday night in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals to get the Miami Heat to one victory away from the championship round, it’s totally fair to play the hindsight game.

How the heck did Herro drop all the way to the Heat at No. 13 in the 2019 NBA draft?

To be fair, the names ahead of him had solid rookie seasons. Beyond Zion Williamson, Ja Morant and R.J. Barrett, there are notables with upside like Coby White, Rui Hachimura and PJ Washington.

And funny enough, the next team behind Miami in that draft was … the Boston Celtics.

A couple of things to note here that are part of the answer. The first is mock drafts had Herro in that range. He had a fine freshman season at Kentucky with 14.0 ppg, 35.5 percent from three and 46.2 percent from the floor overall. Fine, not THAT noteworthy, but there was potential there.

Then came the pre-draft workouts, which impressed teams including the Heat, who saw the shooting ability that’s been on display in the bubble.

But the second point is what I’m focused on here. Herro’s flourishing, in part, because the Heat’s culture and system is perfect for him. This is the team that took unknown Duncan Robinson, worked on very specific skills with him in the G League and turned him into one of the NBA’s most dangerous shooters. Kendrick Nunn went undrafted and became a member of the 2019-20 All-Rookie team. When other team looked at Bam Adebayo and saw problems with his offensive game and fit in the modern game, the Heat saw a project who they turned into one of the most versatile big men in the league.

So with that 13th pick, they saw the potential that exploded on Wednesday. Yes, the shooting is exquisite, but he’s an underrated driver to the hoop with creativity — check out the Euro step below! — and his court vision leads to smart passes.

And when you’re getting praise from Jimmy Butler like he did earlier in the year, you know you’re doing something right:

He can handle, he can score, he can defend. He can do so many different things for us. He’s comfortable in whatever position that you put him in. He doesn’t really think or play like a rookie. He is always working on his game. He is studying the film so he is picking up on how he can be better, where guys are open at. I’m just as comfortable with him handling the ball as anybody.

This is a long way of getting to my second point: if he was on another team, he might not be as good. But in Miami, where the pressure is off of him specifically and where he can be put in the right position to thrive in any situation, he can put up 37 points. The brilliance of grabbing Herro where the Heat did also shows they saw the kind of confidence that you’d find in a veteran and not a 20-year-old on the verge of making it to the NBA finals.

So yes, you could ding other teams for not taking Herro sooner. But it’s more that the Heat are the perfect franchise for him to thrive in.

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