{"id":256280,"date":"2025-08-29T02:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/256280\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T02:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:43:09","slug":"heat-notes-jovic-larsson-fontecchio-dragic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/256280\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat Notes: Jovic, Larsson, Fontecchio, Dragic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heat forward Nikola Jovic<\/a> got off to an excellent start at the EuroBasket tournament in Latvia on Wednesday, as Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/a> writes. Jovic was Serbia\u2019s leading scorer \u2013 with 18 points on 6-of-8 shooting \u2013 and was an eye-popping plus-36 in just 16 minutes of action in a blowout victory over Estonia.<\/p>\n

As impressive as Jovic was a scorer and shooter (3-of-4 on three-pointers), his passing was perhaps even more noteworthy \u2014 he racked up six assists while committing just one turnover. The 22-year-old has averaged 2.2 assists per game in 107 regular season outings through three NBA seasons.<\/p>\n

A pair of Jovic\u2019s Heat teammates who are also competing at EuroBasket<\/a> weren\u2019t as productive in their respective 2025 debuts. Pelle Larsson<\/a> battled foul trouble and scored just 10 points while missing all four of his three-point tries in Sweden\u2019s loss to Finland on Wednesday. On Thursday, Simone Fontecchio<\/a> made just 1-of-11 shots from the field and was a minus-11 across 34 minutes in Italy\u2019s nine-point loss to Greece.<\/p>\n

We have more on the Heat:<\/p>\n

In a mailbag for The Sun Sentinel<\/a>, Winderman explores the Heat\u2019s expectations and projected roles for Jovic and Larsson in 2025\/26, suggesting that Jovic will likely be a top frontcourt reserve while Larsson would be doing well to show he can be a \u201cquality ninth man.\u201d
\nAlthough former Heat point guard Goran Dragic may one day take on a more formal role with the club, there\u2019s no indication that he\u2019s joining Erik Spoelstra\u2018s coaching staff at this point, despite social media posts that showed him in attendance at practice, Winderman writes for The Sun Sentinel<\/a>. For now, it appears Dragic is just informally \u201clooking to pass on knowledge to the next generation,\u201d including rookie point guard Kasparas Jakucionis<\/a>, Winderman explains.
\nWith the deadline<\/a> for teams to use the stretch provision on 2025\/26 salaries now less than 24 hours away, Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald<\/a> hears from a league source that the Heat are \u201cleaning against\u201d stretching anyone\u2019s salary on Thursday or Friday. A waive-and-stretch move likely would\u2019ve received more serious consideration if Miami hadn\u2019t moved under the luxury tax line by trading<\/a> Haywood Highsmith<\/a> to Brooklyn earlier this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heat forward Nikola Jovic got off to an excellent start at the EuroBasket tournament in Latvia on Wednesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3778],"tags":[7,6274,144,229,295,189,3881,6,2202,2248,3303],"class_list":{"0":"post-256280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-heat","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-goran-dragic","10":"tag-heat","11":"tag-kasparas-jakucionis","12":"tag-miami","13":"tag-miami-heat","14":"tag-miamiheat","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-nikola-jovic","17":"tag-pelle-larsson","18":"tag-simone-fontecchio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115109757205853584","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}