There's now less than two weeks remaining until the Miami Heat's season will unofficially be underway with the start of training camp. As fans look ahead to the regular season, it's clear that Jaime Jaquez is going to have some work to do.
Heat fans noticed a real regression in Jaquez's game during his second professional season last year. It was an unfortunate development for a guy who had such a positive rookie season in Miami.
We saw Jaime look less composed and appear as if his confidence took a hit during much of last season. That ran in such sharp contrast to his first year with the organization where he was in the conversation for the Rookie of the Year award for much of the season.
Part of this might be tied to his shooting. Jaquez clearly struggled shooting the ball for stretches of this past season, and that may very well have affected his confidence on offense in general. When his shots weren't falling, he became a much easier player for opposing teams to guard.
Jaime Jaquez must get his rookie year confidence back
Now, it's not all that uncommon for guys in the NBA to go through a sort of "sophomore slump" where it's hard for them to live up to the standard they set for themselves during a really good rookie year. Ideally, that's what happened with Jaquez and he can see a bounce-back campaign in 2025-26.
The problem is that he's going to have to put in some work to get himself further back up the depth chart. Two seasons ago Jaime was fifth (!) on the team in minutes, while last season he was down to 11th on the roster. His minutes average dropped from 28.2 all the way down to 20.7.
And it's also true that the Heat's roster looks quite a bit different now than it did a year ago. Jaquez is going to by vying for minutes against guys like Andrew Wiggins and Nikola Jovic. It's not going to be a situation where he just walks in and is awarded with close to 30 minutes per night, Jaime is going to have to earn his opportunity.
That's the case for anybody on the roster, but the good news is we know that Jaquez is more than capable of winning back the kind of role he had previously. Even if he needs to work on things and make adjustments, he's not just going to shy away from doing that.
At the end of the day, it's Jaime Jaquez's tough-nosed play and grittiness that's indicative of Heat Culture. I'd be willing to bet that it's not a matter of if he bounces back, but when.