{"id":897827,"date":"2026-10-28T18:38:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T18:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/897827\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T18:38:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T18:38:32","slug":"im-still-trying-to-find-that-spot-for-niko-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/897827\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m still trying to find that spot for Niko,\u201d coach \u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the opener, there were 24 minutes in the home loss to the <a data-ylk=\"slk:Minnesota Timberwolves;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Minnesota Timberwolves&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yHasCommerce&quot;:false}\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/minnesota-timberwolves\/16\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a>. In the second game, there were 13 in the home loss to the <a data-ylk=\"slk:Detroit Pistons;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Detroit Pistons&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yHasCommerce&quot;:false}\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/detroit-pistons\/8\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Detroit Pistons<\/a>. The following night, only six minutes in the road loss to the <a data-ylk=\"slk:Charlotte Hornets;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Charlotte Hornets&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yHasCommerce&quot;:false}\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/charlotte-hornets\/5312\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Charlotte Hornets<\/a>. And then none Monday against the Mavericks, when his minutes instead went to point guard Dru Smith. <a data-ylk=\"slk:&quot;I&#039;m still trying to find that spot for Niko,&quot; coach Erik Spoelstra said Wednesday morning.&quot; So this is different than last year, because he&#039;s been giving us good minutes. But we felt that we needed a little bit more perimeter based with Dru, to be able to set everybody else in their normal positions;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;\\&quot;I&#039;m still trying to find that spot for Niko,\\&quot; coach Erik Spoelstra said Wednesday morning.\\&quot; So this is different than last year, because he&#039;s been giving us good minutes. But we felt that we needed a little bit more perimeter based with Dru, to be able to set everybody else in their normal positions&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yHasCommerce&quot;:false}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sun-sentinel.com\/2026\/10\/28\/heats-jovic-again-dealing-with-loss-of-minutes-cant-say-i-kind-of-didnt-expect-it\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;I&#8217;m still trying to find that spot for Niko,&#8221; coach Erik Spoelstra said Wednesday morning.&#8221; So this is different than last year, because he&#8217;s been giving us good minutes. But we felt that we needed a little bit more perimeter based with Dru, to be able to set everybody else in their normal positions<\/a>. &#8220;But I did extend our frontcourt big minutes the other night, so Niko is still fully in the mix. I just have to figure it out.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the opener, there were 24 minutes in the home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. In the second&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-897827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}