MIAMI, FLA- In what has been a fantastic season for the Miami Heat just got better on Tuesday. As announced by the NBA, Miami Guard Tyler Herro was named the NBA’s 2021-2022 Sixth Man of the Year, beating out Cleveland’s Kevin Love and Phoneix’s Cameron Johnson, the other two finalists for the award. In total, Herro received 96 out of 100 first-place votes from a global panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters, and was followed by Love’s three first-place votes and Johnson’s one first-place vote.
The fact that Herro won the prestigious award shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Herro averaged 20.7 PPG, 5.0 RPG, 4.0 APG, and 0.7 SPG, all career-highs. Herro was also quite efficient when shooting the ball, as he shot 44.7% from the field, 39.9% from three-point range, and 86.8% from the free-throw line.
In spite of his great production, Herro did so while mainly playing with Miami’s bench unit, as Erik Spoelstra opted to start his veteran leaders Jimmy Butler and Kyle Lowry, and sharpshooter Duncan Robinson over Herro in the starting lineup. This decision couldn’t have worked out better, as the Heat posted a 53-29 regular-season record and earned the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs.
“I knew what our roster looked like, why we put this team together with the thought of winning a championship,” Herro said Tuesday night on a Zoom call with reporters after learning he had won this season’s Sixth Man of the Year Award. “My role is to come off the bench as the sixth man, and that’s something that I accepted from Day One. I knew that it would work out. I came off the bench my first two years and now this year, being sixth man with a bigger and a higher usage rate, I’m able to impact the game in different ways.”
In winning the award, Herro was also busy re-writing the NBA history books. Once Herro was officially named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year, he became the first Miami Heat player to ever claim the award. This also breaks the streak of six straight Western Conference players to earn the honor, as Utah’s Jordan Clarkson won it last season.
While Herro did impact the game in several different ways, his scoring proved to be quite lethal for Miami, as he became the fifth player to average at least 20.0 PPG off the bench (minimum 50 games as a reserve) since stats began being tracked in the 1970-71 season. Herro now joins Thurl Bailey (1987-88), Eddie Johnson (1988-89), Ricky Pierce (1989-90, 1990-91), and Lou Williams (2017-18, 2018-19) as the only other players to do so.
In addition to this, Herro’s eight 30-point games and twenty 25-point games off the bench were tied for the third-most and fourth-most since the 1970-71 season, respectively. Finally, Herro set a Miami Heat single-season franchise record with 1,162 points off the bench, capping off a historic season for the former No. 13 overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft.
Before enduring such a fantastic 2021-2022 season, Herro quickly emerged as a rising star for the Heat during the 2020 NBA Playoffs, helping lead Miami to the NBA Finals. While Miami would lose to the Los Angeles Lakers, Herro gained much-needed playoff experience, and became the youngest player to ever start in the NBA Finals (20 years and 256 days old).
Soon after his rookie season, Herro had an up-and-down sophomore campaign, where he missed 28 games with lingering neck and foot injuries, and saw a drop in his overall production. After that turbulent campaign, however, Herro has rebounded stronger than ever, and has emerged as a legitimate star for the Heat moving forward.