Miami Heat, Nikola Jovic struggling in Kel’el Ware absence

SALT LAKE CITY — When it comes to the Miami Heat’s middling record, concern at the moment arguably starts in the middle.

No, not with center Bam Adebayo, who scored 32 points in Thursday night’s 127-110 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers to follow up his 25 in Tuesday night’s 130-117 victory over the Sacramento Kings, but rather the rest of the power rotation, namely Kel’el Ware and Nikola Jovic.

Before the loss to the Blazers that dropped the Heat to 1-2 on this five-game western swing and 23-22 overall, the Heat announced that Ware had been sent back to Miami for treatment on his strained right hamstring. The injury has caused him to miss the past three games, his lone absences of the season.

“To do more work around the clock at the arena, instead of trying to cram it in on the plane. But we’re optimistic about it,” coach Erik Spoelstra said, with the Heat moving on to Saturday night’s game against the Utah Jazz at Delta Center, before concluding the trip Sunday night against the Phoenix Suns, Ware now to miss both of those games, as well.

Spoelstra said the organizational decision was to get Ware as much time as possible with team rehabilitation director Jeff Ruiz.

“I don’t think it’ll be a long-term thing, but I don’t have a specific timeline on it,” Spoelstra said. “We’ll just wait until we get back to Miami. He and Jeff Ruiz have already started the process.

“They’ll work the next few days, and we expect there to be some progress.”

What there hasn’t been this season is much progress with the team’s depth in the power rotation.

The trip started after Spoelstra moved Ware to the bench and then called out Ware’s lack of consistency, comments that confused Ware and then were clarified by Spoelstra.

With Ware unavailable, it has left Nikola Jovic as the lone remaining available option to back up Adebayo.

That has not been a heartening process.

After being reduced to 3:54 of mop-up duty on the 135-112 Monday night loss to the Golden State Warriors that opened the trip, Jovic shot 3-of-11 in 19:18 Tuesday night against the Kings and then Thursday 2-of-8 in 16:58 against the Trail Blazers.

Thursday was a struggle throughout for Jovic, yanked for good after a disastrous third-quarter stretch that included an 0-for-2 trip to the foul line, an airballed 3-pointer, a turnover in the backcourt after securing a defensive rebound, and then a three-shot foul on a Jerami Grant 3-point attempt with the Heat down 16. At that point, he was pulled in favor of Simone Fontecchio.

As with Ware and his uneven play before the hamstring injury, Spoelstra has attempted to push and prod to get more out of Jovic this season — with little result.

For the Heat, that is an increasingly concerning element, considering the team this past summer signed the 6-foot-10 big man to a four-year, $64 million extension that kicks in next season.

For now, Spoelstra seemingly is just trying to survive the moment with the 2022 first-round pick.

“When he plays at the five, it opens things up for us,” Spoelstra said of casting Jovic at center in the absence of Ware. “I mean, he had, all of his shots were basically wide open.

“We want him to play with assertiveness, with confidence. He’s so important to what we do. And this is part of being a professional basketball player.”

Jovic closed 1-of-7 on 3-pointers against the Blazers, a significant part of the Heat’s disastrous 9-of-45 overall.

But to Spoelstra, it was about more than the shooting, it was about Jovic meeting the challenge, something the Heat also failed to accomplish as a team in Portland.

“We have to show some grit, and Niko’s got to show some grit right now to be able to fight through it,” Spoelstra said. “You’re always going to go through ups and downs, and when it’s a little bit tough, that’s when actually you can have a great breakthrough.”

For now, it basically has left Adebayo on an island when it comes to the Heat’s power play.

For his part, he was one of the few who got the job done in Portland, his 10 rebounds giving him a double-double, evolving in his game against the bigger of the league’s big men, with Thursday an example against the mass of 7-2, 280-pound Blazers center Donovan Clingan.

“Nine years in at this point, you figure it out,” said Adebayo, who at points in his career has been reluctant about having to go against the league’s biggest of big men. “You figure out how to get your shots off, you understand after watching so much film how to get your shots off. Obviously I put the body of work in to go put the ball in the basket.”