MIAMI — As he sat on the bench during pregame warmups last week in Milwaukee, 6-foot-10 Nikola Jovic let on what was about to transpire, while also finding irony in the situation.
“The wild thing,” the 20-year-old Miami Heat big man said, “is either I start or I don’t play. It’s wild.”
Earlier, Jovic had been told by Heat coach Erik Spoelstra that this would be one of the nights he would start, with Jimmy Butler, Terry Rozier and Josh Richardson all sidelined that game at Fiserv Forum and with Spoelstra needing more length against the Bucks’ 7-1 Brook Lopez and 6-11 Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Hours later, the Heat’s 2022 first-round pick out of Serbia would steal into the night after scoring a career-high 24 points in a 26-point Heat blowout victory. Jovic also would start the following night, when the Heat won on the road against the Philadelphia 76ers, the victory that carried the Heat into this eight-day All-Star break.
Prior to that game in Milwaukee, Jovic had been held out of six of the previous seven. And when the Heat resume their schedule with a four-game trip that opens Friday against the New Orleans Pelicans, it well could be that Jovic again will be moved out of view.
Four months shy of being able to legally be served his first drink in Florida, Jovic accepts the ride as part of his NBA growth curve, and not necessarily as growing pains.
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