“You are a rat!”. “You are overrated!” “Fuck you!”. With those cries they received Tyler Herro (22 years old) the day the current Miami Heat player returned to the pavilion of his city after the news. A year earlier, Herro had promised to play at the university in his homeland —Wisconsin—, where he was loved as a child prodigy, but to everyone’s surprise, he succumbed to the charms of John Calipari and, breaking his word, signed for Kentucky, one of the ocean liners of American college basketball.
In Greenfield, a district of Milwaukee where the escort began to stand out, they do not forget the betrayal of his disciple. There, among green areas, terraced houses and the noise of lawnmowers, Herro forged a shield based on discipline, resistance and work, guidelines that he transferred to his skin years later, already in the NBA, when he got a tattoo in the torso the phrase “No work, no check” (No work, no reward).
In love with sports since he was a child, the star of the Heat soon surpassed basketball over his other great passion, baseball. “As a child he dreamed of playing in the NBA and MLB [la liga norteamericana de béisbol]but I ended up opting for the first one”, he recognized in November to the platform Overtime. Herro, the oldest of three brothers —the youngest, Myles, is on his way to follow in his footsteps—, grew up in Milwaukee, far from the crystal clear waters of Florida where he now boasts a yacht with his parents. To them, he says, he owes everything.
At Greenfield’s Whitnall High School, where he averaged 33 points per game before making the jump to college, the shooting guard struck up a friendship with Kevion Taylor, a basketball hustler who, with a work ethic like Herro’s, didn’t run the same luck. From Valparaíso (Indiana), where he is playing his last year of college, Taylor reminds EL PAÍS of the experiences, games and anecdotes with his friend, when the spotlights were not yet on him: “He is a person who exudes confidence at surprising levels. From a very young age he has been passionate and very competitive. […] He has always pushed the rest to give their best”.
Taylor, who travels to Miami every summer to meet up with Herro again, emphasizes one of the keys to his success: “He never cared what anyone said or thought about him.” Not far from the slopes, where the escort, a self-confessed lover of fashion, wears the most extravagant clothes without waiting for anyone’s approval. “Everything I look good in, I wear. He doesn’t care what they think of me. That’s how I’ve done it since high school, ”he said in the interview with Overtime. Accustomed to pressure from a very young age, the ’14’ of the Heat feels that nothing intimidates him. He plays under his own armor: “One day they love you and the next day they hate you. I am used to it”.
Sean Damro, another of his teammates at Whitnall, knew very early on the bright future that he predicted in the NBA. “I know it sounds cliché, but he was literally the first person to arrive at the gym and the last person to leave. Every day. And again. He many times he rejected plans with the team because he had a training session the next morning. He was inhuman ”, he told this newspaper.
Thus, in his first year in the NBA, Herro surprised everyone with his performance. After a brilliant collective season, the Heat shook up their rivals in a few play offs spectacular, where the rookie averaged 16 points with 43% shooting success.
There, in the silent Disney bubble, where the Wisconsin player became the youngest player in history to start as a starter in a final (20 years and 256 days), beating Magic Johnson, Miami fell to the penultimate twilight of Lebron James. But Herro tasted the sweets of triumph. And he promised himself to come back.
After a bland second year, in which physical discomfort caused transfer rumors, the ’14’ changed the chip: “My dream was to reach the NBA, but once I’m here, I’m not satisfied with that, I want more”.
Obsessed with not going unnoticed, Herro modified his vacations and, with the help of Andrew Moran, his personal trainer, planned a summer full of hours in the gym and double training sessions. He gained muscle, sharpened his aim and began the season off the bench as a second-unit scorer, a role he assumed naturally.
Elevated by the confidence of Erik Spoelstra, Herro has been the Miami player with the most minutes played this season, an inconsistency with the nature of the award for Best Sixth Man, created in 1983 to reward the contribution of the eternal substitute, but a success for the performance of your team.
In a season in which Miami has led the Eastern Conference with authority (53-29), Herro has averaged more points, 21, than historic award winners such as Jamal Crawford, Manu Ginóbili or Jason Terry. With his defensive involvement as the only thing to do, the shooting guard, 1.96 meters tall, overwhelmed the rest of the candidates and got 96% of possible votes as first option.
Before starting his historic season, Herro was a father at the age of 21, something for which, as he confessed to Overtime, was not prepared: “I loved the idea of having my own family and I wanted to be a father, but first I had to get a good education. I read a lot of books about it, I wanted to be ready.” Now, her daughter, Zya, is the fuel that was missing in each game: “I play for her and for her.”
Moran, his coach, assured drafted last october that his nonconformity on the court is almost sick: “He loves this game and is willing to give everything to reach the top.” For now, the Heat have to beat Philadelphia in the conference semifinals, where Herro has already made his mark—25 points in Game 1. It will be then when, on the penultimate step before the ring, the one from Greenfield crosses his path with Milwaukee, his city team, or Boston, the franchise he dreamed of on the night of the game. draft.
Before, on the shores of Biscayne Bay, the Heat prepare in the pavilions attached to the American Airlines Center in Miami. There, in a group circle in which all hands come together as one after training, Herro raises his voice and, with sweat on his forehead, sentences the motto of his team, which could well be that of a lifetime. : “One, two, three, Championship” (One, two, three, championship).
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