{"id":114362,"date":"2024-12-27T18:24:53","date_gmt":"2024-12-27T23:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=114362"},"modified":"2024-12-27T18:24:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T23:24:53","slug":"heat-jaime-jaquez-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/12\/27\/heat-jaime-jaquez-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat Sophomore Doing All the Right Things in Miami"},"content":{"rendered":"

Set aside the drama circulating\u00a0<\/span>Jimmy Butler<\/span><\/a>‘s future in South Beach, immediate or otherwise, and turn your attention to\u00a0<\/span>Jaime Jaquez Jr<\/span><\/a>., the Miami Heat second-year player out of UCLA. The Heat are underwhelming at the moment despite holding the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. Above that, and all the\u00a0<\/span>trade noise centered on his team<\/span><\/a>, Jaquez Jr. is crafting an exceptional season that should <\/span>be making<\/span> the Heat brass proud. It sure is making his head coach smile.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heat Sophomore Doing All the Right Things in Miami<\/h2>\n

Miami Heat SM Jaime Jaquez Jr. Showing Why Organization Drafted Him<\/h3>\n

Jaquez Jr. stormed out of the gate in year number one with the Heat. It was evident that early in the 2023-24 season, Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra had shown trust in his young forward early. Throughout the season, that trust rarely wavered, if at all. Jaquez Jr. even played significant minutes down the season’s stretch and in Miami’s first-round playoff match-up against the\u00a0<\/span>Boston Celtics<\/span><\/a>. Granted, both Butler and\u00a0<\/span>Terry Rozier<\/span><\/a>\u00a0were injured and didn’t lace up for that series. But that circumstance allowed Jaquez Jr. to play the minutes and role that he did. Nevertheless, Spoelstra had him out there, and all in all, Jaquez Jr. put together a solid rookie season.<\/span><\/p>\n

A season later, in his second year, Jaquez Jr. is shining bright again in Miami. However, his numbers are down from last season. Particularly his PPG, shooting percentage, and minutes. However, Jaquez Jr.\u00a0is playing his role considerably well and showing little, if any, signs of a sophomore slump. Despite the drop, his stat line is still impressive, but his role has also changed slightly. That could be the reason for the slight decline in production. He’s averaging 8.9 points on 42% from the field and 28% from three in 21 minutes per game\u2014all down from last season.<\/p>\n

Despite the decrease in offensive production, his impact has increased. This is proof that the Heat made the right decision by drafting Jaquez Jr. to begin with.<\/p>\n

Erik Spoelstra Hands Out Flowers<\/h3>\n

It’s not always about the box score, said Spoelstra when talking up Jaquez Jr.\u00a0and his impact on the season following Miami’s 89-88 squeeze-out win over the\u00a0<\/span>Orlando Magic<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on Boxing Day. Spoelstra had several glowing comments to direct in Jaquez Jr.’s path, including calling him an “X-factor.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“The reason we drafted him [Jaquez Jr.] and the reason he\u2019s had success over his college year and last year is that he does winning things. He\u2019s at his best when he\u2019s filling up a lot of things in the box score or not in the box score and he did a lot of winning things tonight. I think the steals, deflections, and the momentum plays I think fuelled his offense and gave him a lot of confidence on that other end.\u00a0He\u2019s a big-time X factor for us. He\u2019s putting together a healthy stretch for us right now so I think that\u2019s probably been the key more than anything else.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The stretch Spoelstra refers to includes Butler’s absence. He has missed the last three games and is likely to miss Miami’s next game on Saturday against the Atlanta Hawks. Jaquez Jr.\u00a0has stepped up in Butler’s absence, from which Spoelstra’s praise stems. It’s not just this stretch but the entire season to date. Jaquez Jr. is playing good basketball and, as his coach stated, ‘doing winning things.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Set aside the drama circulating\u00a0Jimmy Butler‘s future in South Beach, immediate or otherwise, and turn your attention to\u00a0Jaime Jaquez Jr., the Miami Heat second-year player out of UCLA. The Heat are underwhelming at the moment despite holding the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. Above that, and all the\u00a0trade noise centered on his team, Jaquez […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":114364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1608,62],"tags":[583,49152,142,427],"class_list":["post-114362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heat","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-erik-spoelstra","tag-jaime-jaquez-jr","tag-jimmy-butler","tag-terry-rozier"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114362"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114375,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114362\/revisions\/114375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}