2 weeks Ago
15 minutes before tipoff, the three finalists were announced for the 2024-2025 Kia NBA Sixth Man of the Year award. Those finalists were Payton Pritchard of the Boston Celtics, Malik Beasley of the Detroit Pistons, and former Virginia Cavalier and current Cleveland Cavalier Ty Jerome, who then provided some immediate evidence for why he is deserving not only of this accolade as a finalist, but also presented his case for winning the award. In his first-career NBA playoff game, Ty Jerome scored 28 points off the bench while also dishing out three assists to zero turnovers and he was +17 in 26 minutes on the floor.
Jerome made 10 of his 15 field goals and five of eight three-pointers, including a trio of triples in a brilliant fourth quarter run. The visiting Miami Heat were hanging around with the No. 1 seed Cavs, cutting the lead down to as little as seven points early in the fourth quarter.
Jerome put the nail in the coffin over the next several minutes, scoring or assisting on 24 straight points for Cleveland as part of an electric fourth quarter performance in which he scored 16 points, made three threes, and registered three assists to help the Cavs pull away for a 121-100 victory over the Heat in Game 1 on Sunday in Cleveland. With Jerome scoring 28 points and Cleveland's starting guard Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland contributing 30 and 27 points, respectively, those three players became the fourth trio of guards in history to score 25 or more points in the same NBA playoff game. "This is who Ty is.
This is not a shock," said Donovan Mitchell, who has known Jerome for a long time, having played with him on an AAU team at the age of eight. "I know everybody's going to react like this is a shock that he'd been doing this for us all year." Jerome had terrible injury luck in the first five seasons of his professional career after getting drafted as a first round pick out of Virginia in 2019, including missing all but two games last season with an ankle injury.
He finally played a full season healthy this year with the Cavs, appearing in 70 games and posting career-highs in scoring (12.5 points per game) and three-point shooting (43.9%).
The announcement was made just before Sunday's game that Jerome had been named one of the three finalists for the Sixth Man of the Year award. "It's definitely special after last year, not being able to play the whole year, not being able to play the playoffs, just watching," Jerome said after the game. "It speaks to the time my teammates have empowered me and how my coaching staff empowered me since day one for sure.
" Jerome followed that up with an incredible playoff debut. His 28 points were the third-most in a playoff debut in Cleveland Cavaliers franchise history. That list goes as follows: 1.
LeBron James: 32 points (2006) 2. Kyrie Irving: 30 points (2015) 3. Ty Jerome (28 points (2025) That's pretty good company.
Of course, we must also shout out everyone's favorite UVA sports stats guy on the internet Danny Neckel, who is also an avid Cleveland sports fan. Danny tracked down the stat that Jerome became the first player ever to score 28 points in less than 27 minutes in his NBA playoff debut. Unfortunately for Jerome, given that the NBA awards are regular season awards, his outstanding performance in his first-career playoff game will not be considered in the voting, which closed last week anyway.
The winners of the NBA awards will be announced throughout the playoffs and, though Jerome made a very strong case over the course of the season, it appears that Boston's Payton Pritchard is the heavy favorite to win the Sixth Man of the Year award. It would have been a nice trophy to have on the shelf, for sure, but Ty Jerome and the Cavaliers are focused on a bigger, much more important piece of hardware: the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Cleveland will host Miami for Game 2 of their best-of-seven series on Wednesday at 7:30pm ET and the game will be televised on NBA TV.
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