Pat Riley the latest Heat boss to chime in on unmet expectations with Nikola Jovic
MIAMI — From the start of the season, it was as if Nikola Jovic stood as the swing player when it came to the Miami Heat’s ultimate 2025-26 fate.
So perhaps it hardly was coincidence that two weeks after coach Erik Spoelstra lamented a season gone sour for the 22-year-old forward, Heat President Pat Riley this week paused his comments about the potential of his team’s youth to also focus on the 2022 first-round pick out of Serbia.
When it came to the promise of the Heat’s 20-somethings, Riley felt the need to reflect on how it started for Jovic — who Riley correctly forecast as an opening-night starter — and how it went down an injury-riddled rabbit hole from there, to the degree of Jovic being a non-factor in Spoelstra’s rotation by season’s end.
“I had him in the lineup on my depth-chart board as a starter,” Riley said, three weeks before that season-opener having extended Jovic a four-year, $62.4 million extension that kicks in this next season.
By season’s end, Riley had Jovic remove his name from that same depth chart on the wall of Riley’s office that sits hard along Biscayne Bay.
“When I met with Niko at the end of the year for an exit meeting,” Riley said of the session that came in the immediate wake of the Heat’s first non-playoff season in seven years, “he walked into my office and I said, ‘Go to my board up there.’ And he went up to the board, and I said, ‘Where’s your name?’ He says, ‘Right there.’
“I said, ‘Take it off — it’s a magnet. Take the magnet off. Take it to your seat.’ ”
Listed on that magnet was Jovic’s height and weight — and also his salary, as in the remainder of his Heat contract.
In the most tangible way, it was a moment reflective of expectation unrealized.
“And, I said, ‘Well the most important thing here is not this or that, it’s the name in the middle,’ ” Riley said of all the other elements listed on the name plate, continuing, “You were projected to be a starter for us, that’s the opportunity that you had at the beginning.”
An opportunity lost.
But still, Riley said, with an opportunity for amends at the start of the extension.
“And so we still look at (Jovic), as one of our young building guys,” Riley said, as he continued his media comments earlier this week.
In turned out that opening-night start was Jovic’s lone start of the season, appearing in only 47 of the 82 regular-season games, largely due to a variety of injuries, from a hip impingement to an elbow bruise to a lower-back issue to, ultimately, a season-ending ankle sprain that had him unavailable for the overtime road play-in loss to the Charlotte Hornets that ended the season.
“Niko has had an absolute nightmare season,” Riley said, “not because of any choice other than a lot of injury with his back. Maybe he’ll grow out of that one day, and we won’t have to worry about him.”
Jovic, who offered his postseason comments before Riley spoke, said an open door what he sought.
“At one point,” Jovic said of his Heat rollercoaster, “you feel like you’re good enough for the team to help and then all of a sudden you’re at the end of the bench and you feel like you’re never going to see the floor again. It’s all ups and downs.
“It’s just the way the Heat is, I guess.”
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