Miami Heat’s Nikola Jovic eager to prove himself in postseason
Miami Heat's Nikola Jovic looks to take next step in growth, this time viewed as a potential postseason asset.
PHILADELPHIA — The running joke during Nikola Jovic’s rookie season was that he hadn’t yet graduated high school.
With diploma secured back in Serbia last summer, the higher education of the Heat’s 2022 first-round pick immediately began this season.
So perhaps it was only fitting that the Heat’s practice ahead of Wednesday night’s play-in game against the Philadelphia 76ers came at Temple University.
The mere opportunity to be schooled during his sophomore NBA season was reason enough for pomp and circumstance for the 6-foot-10 big man.
“He’s gotten a lot better with his defensive fundamentals,” said coach Erik Spoelstra, with Jovic not turning 21 until June. “I don’t know many more guys on our roster, other than our young guys, that have done more defensive drills the last two years than Niko, and that’s including during the summer and in preseason and all during the season.
“He’s big. He moves his feet well. And all those 10,000 reps have helped. He’s starting to be able to do multiple coverages, which definitely helps the versatility. More than anything, though, forget above moving feet, forget about schemes, forget about understanding our system, it’s more of a mentality and mindset to defend and do tough things. That’s probably where he’s grown the most.”
Which is all well and good for the regular season. But graduating to the postseason is another story. Last season, in the Heat’s 23-game run through the NBA Finals, Jovic played just 13 postseason minutes.
“This is his opportunity,” center Bam Adebayo said. “He’s being aggressive. He’s figuring out how to space the floor, how to cut, really read the game. It’s one of those things, you get enough minutes, that game starts to slow down for you. And I feel like it’s slowed down for him a lot.
“He’s making it hard not to play him. He sets the tone every night. He makes plays. He makes the right play. He gives those extra efforts that we need.”
As with so many neophytes who have come through the Heat’s program, Jovic said he appreciated from the start that playing time only would come with digging in on the defensive end.
“Defense is the thing that keeps you on the court,” said the No. 27 pick in the 2022 NBA draft. “And as long as I could be good there, I think I’ll be able to play. I feel like to this point they believe in me and they see that I can really defend.
“I worked on it a lot. That’s what I’m going to keep working on, and that’s what’s going to keep me on the court.”
While the playoff experience is limited, the big-game experience is not, with Jovic a member of the Serbian national team that won silver at last summer’s World Cup in the Philippines.
“It helped a lot,” Jovic said of that experience. “It helped a lot for sure, especially because every game there matters, and if you lose it could be the game that sends you home.
“And those are the games that probably feel like playoffs, and they helped me a lot just being around those guys there and playing against all the good teams there, all the good national teams there.”
That makes this version of Jovic decidedly different than the one that spent almost all of the 2023 playoffs as spectator.
“It’s already happening,” Spoelstra said of the increased trust. “But you just don’t know until you get to the playoffs.
“Niko’s really developed and worked on his shooting ability. And then all those hours trailing our defense. It’s gotten incrementally better each week of the season, whether he was in the rotation or not. And that kind of size and habits, those things defensively help our team.”