{"id":274701,"date":"2025-11-10T18:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T18:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274701\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T18:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T18:23:11","slug":"rising-heat-star-early-favorite-for-massive-nba-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274701\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Heat star early favorite for massive NBA honor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Miami Heat<\/a> are surprising pundits with a better-than-expected 6-4 start to their 2025-26 season. And one key cog could reap the benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Bam Adebayo dunking on Victor Wembanyama is the NBA highlight you need to see<\/a><\/p>\n

Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald<\/a>\u00a0submits that third-season reserve small forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. has emerged as an early favorite at nabbing a Sixth Man of the Year award. Previously, Sporting News’ own Mack Baltes<\/a> floated Jaquez as being a prime candidate for the honor.<\/p>\n

In his most recent tilt, the versatile, 6-foot-6 UCLA product\u00a0scored 14 points (albeit on a lackluster 6-of-15 shooting from the field), pulled down 12 boards, and dished out seven dimes while helping the Heat put away the Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> on Friday, 136-131.<\/p>\n

A stellar effort amid trying health circumstances<\/p>\n

Jaquez did all that despite not having the green light to even suit up until mid-afternoon on the day of the bout. He has been grappling with a sprained ankle.<\/p>\n

\u201cJaime at three o\u2019clock was not cleared to play,\u201d Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra said. \u201cI mentioned that to the team, and he put himself out there. He spent three hours just trying to get his ankle ready. He even skipped the walkthrough just to continue to get treatment. And then he got cleared after that, gave us everything he had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through 10 games for Miami, the 24-year-old has been averaging a robust 17.1 points on a .574\/.222\/.771 slash line, 7.0 rebounds, 5.0 dimes, and 0.8 steals in just 29.5 minutes per.<\/p>\n

Thanks in large part to production of Jaquez and backup power forward Nikola Jovic (who notched a team-most 29 points) and reserve guard Dru Smith (13 points), Miami’s bench outscored Portland’s, 63-33.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to really take pride in being that energy booster for our team,\u201d Jaquez said of the Miami bench’s big day against Portland. \u201cAnd so when we see the first unit, whether they\u2019re going good or things are going slow, regardless, we want to just take that energy up to that next level.\u201d<\/p>\n

More Heat news:\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Heat are surprising pundits with a better-than-expected 6-4 start to their 2025-26 season. And one key…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-274701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}