Heat’s Nikola Jovic believes he’s ready for bounce-back season: ‘I had to grow up’

This season is about resilience and perseverance for Miami Heat forward Nikola Jovic.

After a disappointing showing last season, Jovic is looking to bounce back and prove he can be a reliable and consistent rotation player this season. Jovic is also working to prove he can remain resilient from possession to possession, which has sometimes been a struggle for him.

“It’s about handling it like we all have to when it doesn’t necessarily go how we want it to go,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said when speaking about Jovic. “I think he’s going to be able to make an impact with this team with his versatility. That’s going to be a really important thing. … What I’m saying is when it inevitably doesn’t go necessarily how he wants it to go, it’s OK. It’s really about the response.

“It doesn’t have to be the end-of-the-world body language if you miss a couple shots or make a play that he wants to take back. He really cares, but we all make mistakes. I make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s about showing the resiliency to be able to get back into the fight and make the next play, and he really worked on that and showed accountability this summer. I’m encouraged to see how that plays out.”

So far, so good.

With most of the Heat’s rotation regulars held out of Saturday’s 125-124 preseason loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves at Kaseya Center, Jovic stepped into a bigger role and started. The skilled 6-foot-10 forward flashed his intriguing potential, finishing with 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field and 2-of-2 shooting from three-point range, six rebounds, three assists and three steals in 25 minutes.

But it was how Jovic, 23, responded after committing one of his three turnovers on Saturday that impressed Spoelstra most.

“My favorite play of the night was some kind of broken fast break and he made a turnover on a pass,” Spoelstra said following Saturday’s preseason defeat when asked about Jovic’s performance. “He’s been known to sometimes have the body language to run into the stands. But he just turned around and made a dead-ass sprint to get back on defense, and then came back and missed another chippy. Then turned around and got back into the fight.

“That’s what we’re talking about. It’s not about anything else. He has the skills. You can see that on display in all the games right now. And he’ll just continue to get better.”

Jovic’s goal is to be much better than he was last season.

After averaging career highs in points (10.7 per game), assists (2.8) and minutes (25.1) during the 2024-25 season and then signing a four-year, $62.4 million extension with the Heat last offseason, Jovic took a big step back last season.

Jovic, who is entering his fifth NBA season after being drafted by the Heat with the 27th overall pick in 2022, averaged just 7.3 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game while shooting an inefficient 36.6% from the field and 26.9% from three-point range in 47 appearances last regular season.

Jovic started in the Heat’s opener last season, but didn’t start again for the rest of the season before completely falling out of the rotation in the final weeks of the schedule

“When last season finished, I kind of took some time off for the first time for myself,” said Jovic, whose four-year extension kicks in this season with a $16.2 million salary. “Usually, I’ll be getting right back to work and thinking about the next thing. Just thinking about life, everything I went through and everything I learned. I learned a lot last season.”

What did Jovic learn from his struggles last season?

“Just a little bit of everything,” said Jovic, who played well for the Serbian national team during European World Cup qualifying this past summer. “How things look when they’re not going your way. How to not act. How to act. A lot of different stuff, little stuff like that. More on the mental game part, too. I think that’s really important where I felt like everybody was against me and stuff. I was thinking the wrong way last year. I had to grow up a little bit and learn how to be a man and how to take actions for myself. Just stuff like that.”

One of Jovic’s big goals this offseason was to get his three-point shot right after a rough shooting year last season.

Among the 229 players around the NBA who took at least 160 three-point attempts last regular season, Jovic finished with the league’s second-worst three-point shooting percentage ahead of only Detroit Pistons forward Ronald Holland II (25.3%). Jovic shot 26.9% on 3.6 three-point attempts per game last season.

Jovic made some adjustments in his shot this offseason, “trying to shoot it faster and get my feet ready a little faster” in preparation for more three-point opportunities this season while playing alongside two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo for the first time.

“I felt like I just had to get my shot right again,” Jovic said, with the Heat in the middle of some practice time before playing its fourth of five preseason games on Wednesday against the Brooklyn Nets at Kaseya Center (7:30 p.m., WPLG Local 10). “Not that it went away or something like that. My shooting numbers during practices and everything were good. It just wasn’t looking great in the games. Just making sure I’m back at shooting over 36%, 37%, which I’m kind of always used to.

“I was never worried about it because I knew how good of a shooter I am. And during the summer, that’s probably one of the things I’m most worked on and it for sure helped. I’m sure it’ll be good this year.”

It would help Jovic if he could stay healthy this season, as he has yet to play in more than 47 games in a single regular season during his young NBA career. He missed 25 games last season (five games due to a hip injury, four games due to an elbow injury, 11 games due to a lower back injury and five games due to a sprained ankle).

“I feel good right now, I really do,” Jovic said. “I’m healthy, I’m happy with where my body is right now. During the whole summer, the only thing I was dealing with was making sure my back is good. I’ve been dealing with a lot of back injuries, so the whole summer my back luckily has been really good. And hopefully this is one of those seasons where I don’t get injured.”

Jovic will need to continue competing for playing time, though, on a new-look Heat team that now features a frontcourt led by three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo and Antetokounmpo. In addition, veteran forward Bobby Portis is expected to be the first big man used off the Heat’s bench.

“I got to be that spark plug of the bench,” Jovic said.

But for Jovic to bounce back from last season and reach his full potential, he knows where it starts for him.

“I get pretty hard on myself. I think it’s pretty obvious,” he said. “When I miss the first shot, I usually get pretty [upset] and stuff like that. You have to work on that. In the game of basketball, other guys need you in so much more stuff than just that two-second shot that you take. Basketball is so much more than that. I got to think about the next thing, small details and stuff like that. That’s what I worked on, next-play speed. That’s how you add these little mental games, even during practices back home where I would make sure it’s the hardest mental type of practice for me where I have to stay stable. I have to make sure I don’t get in my head and just little stuff like that.”

Jovic worked with mental coaches this past summer to make sure he returned this season as an improved version of himself.

“His skillset can fit in with basically any team. I mean, he has so much versatility. I’m encouraged by what he did this summer,” Spoelstra said. “… He’s still a young player. So even though at times it feels like I had no patience for that growth, I’m able to step back and think about his progress.”