Heat’s Nikola Jovic to continue busy summer in World Cup semifinals. A look at his production
Miami Heat forward Nikola Jovic hasn’t been off this offseason.
After a back injury derailed Jovic’s rookie NBA season, he has spent the last two months making up for time lost as a member of the Heat’s summer league team and then in the FIBA Basketball World Cup with the Serbian national team.
“It’s going to be a long summer, but I feel like it’s going to be a good summer,” Jovic said in July at this start of his busy offseason stretch during Las Vegas Summer League.
Less than a month before the Heat is scheduled to open training camp, the hectic part of Jovic’s summer isn’t over yet after Serbia defeated previously unbeaten Lithuania 87-68 in the World Cup quarterfinals in the Philippines on Tuesday. Jovic and Serbia, which is 5-1 in the tournament, will play the winner of Wednesday’s quarterfinal Canada-Slovenia matchup in Friday’s semifinals.
Jovic’s potential and growth has been on display this summer as a 20-year-old with an intriguing combination of size and skill at 6-foot-11.
Jovic contributed eight points on 3-of-5 shooting from the field and 1-of-2 shooting from three-point range, two rebounds and two assists in 22 minutes in Tuesday’s win over Lithuania.
Through Serbia’s first six World Cup games, Jovic has averaged 10.7 points, 2.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game while shooting 56.4 percent from the field and 10 of 22 (45.5 percent) from beyond the arc.
Jovic’s best World Cup performances up to this point came at the start of tournament, when he averaged 16.3 points on 18-of-24 (75 percent) shooting from the field and 8-of-12 (66.7 percent) shooting from three-point range in Serbia’s first three games during group play. His best outing came when he scored 25 points while shooting a perfect 9 of 9 from the field and 5 of 5 on threes in an Aug. 30 win over South Sudan.
This comes after Jovic averaged 15 points, 4.5 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game while shooting 40 percent from the field and 5 of 15 (33.3 percent) from three-point range in four summer league appearances in July.
Jovic, who was drafted by the Heat with the 27th overall pick last year, is the only Heat player participating in this year’s World Cup. Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is serving as a Team USA assistant coach.
For Jovic, all of these experiences are valuable as he looks to earn a consistent spot in the Heat’s rotation in his second NBA season after spending most of his rookie season sidelined by a back injury. But he’s also dealing with the possibility of being traded, as his name has been mentioned as a potential trade piece in a possible deal for Portland Trail Blazers All-Star guard Damian Lillard.
“Since he missed a decent amount of time last year due to a couple different injuries, we spent the last six weeks or three months of the season just trying to prepare him for the summer,” Spoelstra said of Jovic last month. “Everything we were doing in our program from the conditioning to the weight room work to the rehab work to the basketball skill development was to prepare him for summer league and then potentially have an opportunity to play for his national team. This is exactly the type of summer and offseason that he needed.”
The Heat is scheduled to hold its annual media day on Oct. 2 before beginning training camp on Oct. 3. The Heat opens the preseason on Oct. 10 and the regular season on Oct. 25.
