"It can be easy to overlook Herro’s credentials after this summer of debate. He won Sixth Man of the Year at 22 years old. At 23, he averaged 20 points, five rebounds, and four assists, joining Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic, Jayson Tatum, Ja Morant, and Luka Doncic as the only other players this century to meet those criteria. All, except Herro, are considered superstars."
I actually had no idea that he was in semi-rarified air. If you looked at the discourse surrounding him during the postseason and the off-season, you’d think he was a literal high school jv player who was being passed off as an nba player as part of some heat long con lol
I always understood and agreed that the Blazers had no use for Tyler; BUT the way that most people talked about his game— calling him trash, garbage, useless, “how good can he even be if the heat made it to the finals with him out for all of it” — was pretty unwarranted for a guy who’s been like a 22+ pts average and won 6th man of the year.
He’s a lot better than people want to acknowledge; his abilities have been vastly downplayed in order to clown the Heat’s trade package for Dame but he’s pretty good and I’m excited to see what his season looks like.
I feel like it's the opposite because media members and people on here (and get highly upvoted) are still claiming the Heat are either going to miss the playoffs or not make it past the play in despite their performance between 2020-2023. People are claiming the Sixers, Cavs, and Knicks are in a better position than the Heat lol despite the Sixers being incapable of making it out of the second round AND the dysfunction they're currently dealing with.
If anything, I think the discourse surrounding the Heat proves the question OP is asking; there was no respect when they made they run (most of their performance chalked up to "fool's gold, lucky shooting, and Giannis was injured and tatum's ankle!" while ignoring that they lost Herro to an injury for the whole post season and that despite Giannis being out for a game and a half, the Bucks still won the only game Giannis was completely out of -- and lost the games he played, including when he triple doubled and with an insane performance by Brook Lopez. Same for the Celtics- lots of "but tatum's ankle!! while conveniently overlooking that Celtics dropped 3 games with a perfectly healthy Tatum --2 of which were at home). They were gentleman swept by the Nuggets but very little props given for beating Denver at home--something literally not one team in the post season accomplished.