NBA Exec Rates Jordan Poole Over Tyler Herro After Heat Star's $130M Contract

Tyler Herro and the Miami Heat agreed to a four-year, $130 million contract extension this offseason, but some around the league prefer another guard who could be signing his own extension in the near future.

"Better creator, stronger going to the rim, should hold up more defensively if he just tries because he plays a little bit bigger," one league executive said when explaining why they viewed Golden State Warriors guard Jordan Poole more favorably than Herro, per Anthony Slater of The Athletic.

Slater suggested someone preferring Poole to Herro at this point would "probably be in the majority."

The Warriors guard is coming off a career-best season, which was his third in the league. He averaged 18.5 points, 4.0 assists, 3.4 rebounds and 0.8 steals per game while hitting 44.8 percent of his shots from the field and 36.4 percent of his triples.

Most notably, he improved those shooting numbers to 50.8 percent from the field and 39.1 percent from deep while averaging 17.0 points a night in the playoffs for the champion Warriors.

Poole scored in double figures in five of the six NBA Finals games against the Boston Celtics, including when he dropped 17 behind five three-pointers in Game 2.

Performing on that type of stage is an ideal way to elevate one's status, but Herro couldn't do that as he dealt with injury concerns in the Eastern Conference Finals loss to the Celtics. He missed Games 4, 5 and 6 and played just seven minutes in Miami's Game 7 loss.

Yet Herro was the Sixth Man of the Year last season and averaged a career-best 20.7 points for a Heat squad that finished with the best record in the Eastern Conference.

Herro is just 22 years old, while Poole is 23. The contract the former signed could serve as something of a benchmark for the latter, who is rookie extension eligible on a team that may be facing a number of contract decisions in the near future with Poole, Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green.

If the Warriors choose to bring back Poole for the foreseeable future and prevent him from hitting restricted free agency in the summer of 2023, they will be keeping a potential foundational cornerstone who some around the league believe is better than the reigning Sixth Man of the Year.