Perhaps no Miami Heat player was more subdued during the 2024-25 season than forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. After a stellar rookie season in which he finished fourth in Rookie of the Year and ninth in the Sixth Man of the Year race, he fell victim to another slump.
However, Jaquez can establish himself as an integral member of Miami’s young core with a strong third season in the league, and he’s looking to do just that. The 24-year-old said last season he put a lot of pressure on himself to make his 3-point attempts, but he no longer operates with that mindset.
“I just stopped putting pressure on myself to hit or miss a hat trick,” he said. “Do it, miss it, stop letting it affect me.
“I think last year I was trying to put so much focus and pressure on myself to try to be that. And this year I’m just focusing on my strengths and one of those strengths is just going downhill, creating for my team and sometimes for myself.”
Jaquez also indicated that he is looking to get downfield and run the ball regularly in the 2025-26 campaign.
“I want to get down there, go for a drive,” he said. “I think at the end of the day, going downhill, whether it’s facilitating or scoring, trying to do those little things to help my team get in the best possible position.”
The former UCLA star said he has been playing basketball for a very long time despite the idea that he is probably only in the early stages of his NBA career.
“It’s a game I’ve been playing a lot, my whole life, really,” he said. “I think it just helps sometimes, especially with this second unit, a lot of young guys, just trying to settle in and get moving.
Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra went over Jaquez’s ability to go downhill and explained how he can use that ability to create scoring opportunities for himself and his teammates.
“He’s such a downhill force that he’s going to attract defenders,” Spoelstra said. “So naturally he needs to develop and play enough to keep the defense honest, because we need him to be aggressive and I don’t want to take the attacking game away.
“That’s probably his best offensive skill. He’s got great footwork and all those things. And makes enough plays and you help create easy shots for other guys and it opens up your own driving angles.”
Encouragingly, Jaquez is “feeling much better” and working to learn from his mistakes as a second-year NBA player.
“I feel a lot better,” he said. “I think I’m just watching a lot of film, learning from a lot of my mistakes from last year and just applying it to this year.
Jaquez recently gave Heat fans something to be excited about with a strong preseason performance against the Atlanta Hawks on October 13th. In Miami’s loss, he dropped 17 points and converted half of his 14 shots from the field. He grabbed four rebounds, dished out three assists and blocked a shot.
It wasn’t even Jaquez’s single-game high of Miami’s preseason, as he dropped 19 points on 6-of-8 shooting against the San Antonio Spurs just days earlier on Oct. 8.
Many signs — from his strong preseason performance to his comments about wanting to learn from his mistakes from last season — point to Jaquez having a bounce-back campaign in 2025-26, but whether or not he ultimately will remains to be seen.