Miami Heat: Derrick Jones Jr.’s 2020 season recap, grade, & superlative

The Miami Heat love what Derrick Jones Jr. brings to the floor when he’s focused. He was definitely locked in for a lot of this past season.

The Miami Heat did it again when they landed Derrick Jones Jr. a few years back. What’s that you ask? That would be finding a role for a guy that no one else seemed to be able to do.

Derrick Jones Jr. is the kind of player that anyone can pull for. A high flyer out of UNLV, Jones began his career with the Phoenix Suns, where he couldn’t find a spot on the roster.

After being waived, he signed a two-way deal with the Miami Heat, and the rest was history.
After spending time in the G-League and the active Heat roster, Derrick was signed exclusively to the Heat squad in 2018. Now in his third season in Miami, Jones Jr. has firmly established himself as a rotation player in coach Spo’s system.

Derrick averaged 8.5 PPG, 3.9 RPG, 1.1 APG in 23 minutes per game. All of these stats are NBA career highs.

The best game of the year for him came on January 20th, which honestly feels like three years ago but DJJ went off against the Clippers, scoring 25 points on 10 of 12 shooting. But when you think about DJJ, you don’t think about shooting stats or playmaking, you think about his freak athleticism and highlight dunks.

The Miami Heat got decent production out of the NBA’s 2020 Slam Dunk champion.

In that regard, he definitely delivered in 2020.

The highlight of the 2020 season for Jones Jr. was bringing home the NBA Slam Dunk Contest trophy. Some might say this was a controversy, after all, Aaron Gordon had a spectacular performance.

But the right man won in the end, he says with his Miami Heat shades on. Jones Jr. was good in the regular season, often coming off the bench as the seventh or eighth man.

That’s great in the regular season but Spo couldn’t trust DJJ in the playoffs, especially in the Eastern Conference finals, and more than that in the NBA finals. Here is his grade for the year.

B-

You could argue this grade should be higher, but his three-point shooting actually went down from last year and if he wants to see more playing time, Jones Jr. has to shoot better than 28% from the field. Here is his superlative and you should have guessed it.

Most Likely To Effortlessly Dunk On the Whole opposing five

It was a solid season for Derrick Jones Jr., with all things considered. If his shooting can improve, his stock will rise even higher.

He is a free agent, who is expected to have a few suitors, so we will also monitor how that shakes out. If he returns to Miami though, let’s hope he can build on this season for the better.