Taking A Closer Look
While those rankings are what they are and while we have addressed how there isn’t even a conversation to be had about Morant and Williamson being the top two drafted rookies (another shout out to Kendrick Nunn for technicality purposes), the only other rookie to even give credence to here would be Brandon Clarke. Washington, Hachimura, and Pascall all play on awful teams and while the reasons for their teams’ poor play are probably much bigger than them, they still aren’t winning as much as the others are and that matters.
You also look at it on a Micro level, where Clarke, Williamson, Morant, and Herro have taken on much more active roles in their teams’ success than the others mentioned. With Clarke being the only other roadblock between Herro and his flat out third ranking, based on Hashtag’s rankings, you then look at the aspects of their games that has shined and the overall value of that in the NBA.
Clarke is a rebounder, shot-blocker, finisher, and high percentage shot maker, which are absolutely necessary to win in the NBA. Herro, however, is a ball-handler, a shot-maker, a shot creator, a facilitator, a sniper from deep, and has also acted as a closer for the Miami Heat at times.
With all that in mind and with the fact that the league places an extra emphasis on deep shooting in this day and age, what Herro offers a team is simply more valuable than that of which is offered by Clarke. That simply just is what it is.
When looking even deeper at the raw numbers, Herro ranks 10th in minutes per game, 19th in field goal percentage, eighth in free throw percentage, tied for first in three-pointers made with Kendrick Nunn (of course), eighth in points, ninth in rebounds, and 13th in assists.
Mind you, these rankings include players who don’t play nearly as many minutes as Herro, who don’t take anywhere near the level of difficulty shots that Herro does, and all while Herro has missed the last few weeks of play. He still has these rankings, although he has three fewer weeks of data to work with than most of the players on this list. Now look again with that in mind and tell me you aren’t impressed.
In any situation, you can feel how you like, but these are the facts. Based on everything from the eye test to standardized uniformed metrics, to the raw statistics themselves, Tyler Herro has been the third-best rookie, by far. This is so much so, that he should have been the third pick. We are glad that he wasn’t though or we wouldn’t have had the benefit of all the above metrics working in our favor.