Four games, four shrinking workloads
Nikola Jovic played 24 minutes in Miami’s season-opening loss to Minnesota, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Against Detroit that fell to 13, at Charlotte to six, and on Monday night against Dallas he did not get on the floor at all. The Heat have lost all four of those games.
The minutes he lost on Monday went to point guard Dru Smith. Coach Erik Spoelstra explained after Wednesday’s shootaround that Smith’s perimeter profile let the rest of the lineup stay in its normal spots, and that he also stretched his big men’s minutes in that game. Jovic, he said, is still in the rotation conversation. “I’m still trying to find that spot for Niko,” Spoelstra said.
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Staying ready
Jovic, 23, a 2022 first-round pick from Serbia, said the message from the staff has not changed: be ready when called. He told reporters he had been through stretches like this before and was not surprised, and that such periods get easier to handle the more of them you see.
Miami visits Atlanta on Wednesday night, the next chance for Spoelstra to settle on a rotation. Whether Jovic is in it will say a lot about how the Heat want to balance shooting on the perimeter against size up front.
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