Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Norman Powell both played through injuries on Saturday as the Heat picked up a win over Portland, writes Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald. Miami was already short-handed with Bam Adebayo missing his second straight game due to a sprained big toe and Tyler Herro still recovering from offseason ankle surgery, so Jaquez and Powell were both needed despite suffering sprained ankles on Friday. Jaquez wound up with 14 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists in 29 minutes, while Powell contributed 22 points, two rebounds and three assists in 30 minutes.
“Jaime at three o’clock was not cleared to play,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I mentioned that to the team, and he put himself out there. He spent three hours just trying to get his ankle ready. He even skipped the walkthrough just to continue to get treatment. And then he got cleared after that, gave us everything he had.”
After regressing during his second NBA season, Jaquez has emerged as one of the early favorites for Sixth Man of the Year honors, according to Chiang. He ranked third in the league in points off the bench entering Saturday’s game and has become one of the leaders of a potent reserve unit.
“We want to really take pride in being that energy booster for our team,” Jaquez said. “And so when we see the first unit, whether they’re going good or things are going slow, regardless, we want to just take that energy up to that next level.”
There’s more from Miami:
- The Heat and Trail Blazers combined for 267 points in a battle of the league’s two fastest-paced teams, Chiang states in the same story. Spoelstra introduced the up-tempo style during training camp and believes his players have done a good job adapting to it. “Obviously, our guys are getting pretty comfortable with it,” he said. “Embracing the unknown, that was the first thing from media day. And both teams were attacking. This was a heck of a basketball game.”
- Nikola Jovic has been through an up-and-down start to the season, so it was encouraging to see him produce 29 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and two steals on Saturday. The Heat are counting on the young forward to be part of their foundation after giving him a four-year, $62.4MM extension last month. “I would have lied if I said that the last two weeks were easy because I felt like everything I did was wrong, and I was not helping this team at all,” Jovic tells Chiang in a separate story. “And I want to thank the coaches and everybody from the team for supporting me and letting me know that I’m important for the team. But my head just wasn’t there. I didn’t know how to help the team.”
- With the Heat preparing to host the Cavaliers on Monday and Wednesday, Ira Winderman of The Sun Sentinel looks at how the playoff sweep last spring revealed the need for change. Spoelstra was humiliated by the defeat, particularly in the two home games, which Miami lost by 37 and 53 points. “We were done at the end of April, and it was a very painful, embarrassing first-round loss,” Spoelstra said. “We had done a lot emotionally to earn that ticket to get into the playoffs, and we felt really proud about that, back-to-back (play-in) games on the road to earn that ticket. And it was just — it was embarrassing. And you had to credit Cleveland with that.”