Nikola Jovic has admittedly had a shaky start to the season. He hasn't looked all that comfortable and has been more erratic than his own liking, and it's certainly forced many Miami Heat fans to question his future with the team. In many ways, Jovic just said what all Heat fans may have already been thinking.
"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...I just wasn’t helping myself. I looked worse and worse. And, you know, it’s obvious that I wasn’t playing great basketball."Nikola Jovic
Jovic was able to "break" out of his early-season slump with arguably the best performance of his career thus far against the Portland Trail Blazers. On the second night of a back-to-back, Jovic finished with 29 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists on 10-16 shooting from the field.
Most importantly, he helped lead Miami to a big win.
But before that slump-busting performance, Jovic was quite pedestrian through the first three weeks of the season for the Heat. In those first nine games of the season, Jovic was averaging just eight points and four rebounds per game on 41 percent shooting from the field.
Whether his performance against the Blazers is a sign of things to come for Miami remains to be seen, but it was very much needed with the way he looked to begin the year. Especially considering that Jovic just signed a brand new contract extension with the Heat just before the start of the regular season.
The last thing that Jovic could've wanted or hoped for was a rough start to the year after signing the new deal. Nevertheless, it's something that he had to fight through. It'd be a bit much to suggest that he may be out of the woods just yet, but there's no question that there was at least a sense of relief from Jovic with his performance against the Blazers.
And, sometimes, that's all it takes for a player, especially one as talented as Jovic, to get it going.
Jovic is hoping that he's finally shaken his slow start to the year; so are the Heat. However, looking back at the first few weeks of the year, there's no sugar-coating it: Jovic had been a letdown for the team. And not even he would disagree with that.