Tyler Herro was motivated by Pat Riley's 'fragile' comments: 'I'm a perfectionist in my own way'

Miami Heat guard Tyler Herro was a polarizing player over his first five NBA seasons.

While he continued to get stronger and improved each season as a playmaker, shotmaker and (off-ball) defender, Herro had an inefficient shot diet, missed half of last season due to a fluke ankle injury and didn’t rise to the requisite level as a secondary creator in the postseason on multiple occasions.

Heat president Pat Riley challenged Jimmy Butler last May the only way he knew he how to. So far, it hasn’t worked. But Riley also made pointed comments toward Tyler Herro, calling him “fragile.”

In a recent interview with Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald, Herro opened up about how Riley’s comments motivated him last summer leading into the 2024-25 season.

“I’m a perfectionist in my own way,” Herro said. “I don’t need anyone to tell me I’m fragile or I haven’t played as many games. I’m aware of what’s going on. I know I missed the last two seasons, with the hand injury and half the season last year. I’ve seen the comments coach Riley said. In my own world, I was going to try to play more games on my own either way. I took his words, obviously, into consideration and used it as motivation as I always do.”

Herro responded–emphatically. In fact, he’s having, by far, the most efficient season of his career up to this point without having missed a single game.

The soon-to-be 25-year-old guard is averaging 24.0 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.1 assists in 35.3 minutes per game. He’s shooting 46.9 percent from the floor, 40.3 percent from 3-point range and 86.2 percent from the free-throw line, good enough for a 58.0 effective field goal percentage (best of career by 4.9 percent) and 61.8 true-shooting percentage (best by 5.2 percent).

Herro has completely eliminated long 2s from his diet. He turned a few of those long 2s into more 3s, taking 9.7 per game, which account for 55.4 percent of his shot diet. He’s also leveraged his added strength and acceleration to get to the rim and free-throw line at career-high rates.

He’s not the perfect player, but like I’ve oftentimes said, growth isn’t always linear. And the 6-foot-5 guard has leveraged his growth into being one of the Heat’s most important players while many counted him out over the last several seasons.

“This is not an overnight thing,” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra told Chiang about Herro’s growth. “I think people only recognize if the scoring average goes up. But his skill set has been really developing for the last three years. He was a heck of an offensive player when he was Sixth Man of the Year [for the 2021-22 season]. Now he’s added some strength, he’s defending better, his playmaking has gotten better, off-the-catch movement has gotten better. We know what he’s been able to do with the ball in his hands — that has been two or three years now. But it’s really putting a lot of things together to help your team.

“The responsibilities that he has for the team, he’s really worked at it, making his body stronger. He loves all the responsibilities offensively, the scoring but also the playmaking, the facilitating, sometimes just playing off the ball and creating some confusion with all of that. But all the great players develop that kind of consistency at some point.”

You can’t ask for a greater response from the ascending star, but his challenge will be to continue to build on his efforts while being glued atop other teams’ scouting reports.