The Space Eater: Jaime Jaquez Jr. Is Not Your Normal Rookie

From his first shift in his first preseason game, you could sense that something was different.

Not the first shot, though. When Jaime Jaquez Jr. curled around a Bam Adebayo handoff in the second quarter against the Charlotte Hornets on October 10, the elbow jumper he proceeded to drop in against soft, drop coverage barely registered. It was a shot that, literally according to Second Spectrum tracking data, over 300 players hit a season ago. No eyebrows needed to be raised. The game moved on.

The second shot was the one. This time he curls around a screen from Adebayo at the left elbow, receives a pass from Dru Smith and drives into the paint, just a step ahead of Gordon Hayward. With Hornets center Mark Williams sliding over to help, he plants a pivot foot and extends the ball toward the baseline before spinning back middle. Hayward stays with him through the first and the second fake but can’t resist on the third as he leaves his feet. One step through later, the ball falls in softly off the glass.

“Ohhhh, would you look at that,” exclaims HEAT play-by-play broadcaster Eric Reid, a hint of surprise escaping his intonation.

Rookies aren’t supposed to make plays like that, in preseason or otherwise. They aren’t supposed to conjure up images of Hakeem Olajuwon shaking David Robinson out of his boots on his way to a championship. Even allowing for the experience gained over four collegiate years, and a scouting report that suggested footwork would be chief among the translatable fundamentals, you don’t expect to see it so early, so soon, so smooth.

Ever since, at least through the first 20 games of a career that must still venture through a great many forks coming in the road, Jaime Jaquez Jr. has done nothing but deliver on the promise of that moment.

If you want to get a sense of how the HEAT draft, all you need to do is pull up their recent history. They go young. They go upside. Nikola Jovic, Precious Achiuwa, Tyler Herro, Bam Adebayo were all either coming off their freshman season or were the age equivalent. You have to go back to Josh Richardson (Pick 40) in 2015 and Dexter Pittman (Pick 32) in 2010 to find four-year college careers on the ledger, and back to Wayne Simien in 2005 to find a four-year player taken in the first round – and he was the 29^th pick. They drafted Dorrell Wright out of high school. Dwyane Wade and Caron Butler were two-year players. There is, one might say, a modus operandi.

But the HEAT were in a unique position in the 2023 NBA Draft, and Jaquez Jr. was a unique player. Most teams coming off a run to the NBA Finals, teams ready made to contend for a title the next season, are picking at the end of the first round. After an underwhelming regular season which forced them to earn their way into the No. 8 seed through the Play-In Tournament, Miami was picking at 18. While not quite a lottery pick, it was early enough that there would be plenty of promising freshman to choose from.

As Jaquez Jr. was averaging 13.9 points on a night his junior year, true shooting 54.4 percent on 23.9 usage, he was not a clear-cut first-round pick. On March 10 of 2022, The Athletic had him at No. 45 on their Big Board. Even before the 2023 draft, after Jaquez Jr. had upped his usage to 27.9 while maintaining the same efficiency, The Ringer had him No. 25 and NBA Mock Draft Database, which pulls in big boards and mock drafts from all corners in an attempt to build a consensus, had him No. 27. And yet Jaquez Jr., who had impressed with his interview at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago, was firmly in the conversation at No. 18 along with guys three years younger.

While a smaller part of the draft process, one of the pieces of intel Miami liked was that you could always find Jaquez Jr. in a gym. Always playing, always working. There are gym rats and then there are real gym rats. Jaquez Jr. was as much a hoops junkie as you’ll find.

To hear Jaquez Jr. tell it, that started as early as fifth grade when his father, Jaime Jaquez Sr. – Jr.’s parents met while playing at Concordia University Irvine and his grandfather, Ezequiel, also played collegiately – would take him up to the local high school so he could play with the older kids. If he wasn’t there, he was finding games to play at the park. At UCLA, he was a regular at former UCLA player Rico Hines’ offseason runs which regularly attract elite NBA talent.

“Those were the best,” Jaquez Jr. says. “You just got so much better. The way the games are organized simulates the last three or four minutes in a game. You really learn how to win. You lose and you have to sit. That’s where I think I really developed that skill of knowing how to take care of the ball, learning how to win because I didn’t want to sit and lose.

“You had to find ways to win. That’s why I like playing pickup so much because you learn a bunch of things about the game. You’re just constantly playing. You might have some guy on your team that you don’t know, so you just find a way. To me that’s a beautiful thing about basketball that you can just go play anywhere.”

Like most top talents, Jaquez Jr. had a skills trainer as he was coming up. Before class in High School, he would work out with a trainer at 6:30 in the morning, fine tuning the same mid-post footwork he had grown up watching Kobe Bryant perfect, and then go lift weights with his dad. “You have to,” Jaquez Jr. says, it’s the only way to tighten up your shooting and ballhandling. He resisted falling into the trap of overdoing the training sessions. Skills work was not his “favorite thing.” He wanted to play.

“That’s, to me, where you really learn a lot about yourself,” he says.

“He’s still a rookie so he’s got ways to grow but he reads and processes the game at a high level for a 22-year old,” says HEAT assistant coach Eric Glass, Jaquez Jr.’s primary workout partner. "That comes more from playing than it does from skill work.”

“Even now, he plays a lot of minutes [in a game] and then he sees the guys who haven’t played playing 1-on-1 and 2-on-2 and he’s like, ‘I want to get in that.’ He’s just so eager. ‘Let’s hoop, let’s hoop, let’s hoop.’ That’s part of the love of the game that’s unique. A lot of guys love the game, but not everyone loves to compete."

When you watch Jaquez Jr. now, as he comes off winning the KIA NBA Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month award for October and November, all of that is what you see – someone who has played a ton of basketball with a purpose. Someone who knows exactly what his game is and has put it to the test against live competition.

You can see it in the post, where Jaquez Jr. has been working both with his back to the basket and facing up, backing down smaller players or working his way around bigger ones. He’s been so reliable in those spots that, with high-usage guys like Tyler Herro and Adebayo missing time, the first couple minutes of the fourth quarter, when Jimmy Butler typically rests, have consistently become a stretch when Spoelstra runs the offense through him for two or three possessions in a row. Nobody else in the league has more post-ups during that specific two-minute stretch, and only Kristaps Porzingis (1.77 points-per-post) has produced more value out of the post than Jaquez Jr. (1.75).

“It’s these places in between,” Erik Spoelstra says. “Now, with AAU and also traditional player development, one-on-one skills trainers, they don’t really work on those places in between. He has good fundamentals from being well coached but also the way he’s developed his game. It seems like it started with those areas first and built out from there.

“It’s just knowing how to eat up space and have the fundamentals and the footwork to get to where you want to go to.”

You can see it off the ball, where Jaquez Jr. has been catching one defender after another with ghost cuts, waiting for the right heads to turn so he can make his move to the spot where the right eyes will see him.

You see it in the corners, where Jaquez Jr. has been more than comfortable accepting a closeout, pausing for a beat and methodically taking his defender off the dribble, burrowing his way into the paint shoulders-first with spins, pivots and a crafty dribble that gets him where he wants to go. He can avoid contact, he can create it and he can finish through it. Only three players have more drives starting from the corners than Jaquez Jr. – Butler is second on that list – and his 24 have produced 1.15 points per drive.

“We were originally discussing that you’re going to need to find ways on the perimeter as a spot-up guy,” Glass says, recalling an early conversation with Jaquez Jr. about fitting into lineups with stars. “So use that, mentally internalize that as, ‘Ok, this is what I do well in the mid-post, now try to bring it out to the three-point line.’

“He's just turning the mid-post rhythm into the corners.”

And when the rim is sealed off, he has counters. When Bobby Portis Jr. cut off his drive recently, Jaquez Jr. broke out a behind-the-back dribble into a stepback jumper – another eyebrow raising moment.

“He has the fundamentals to be able to attack in different ways, whether you cut him off or not,” Spoelstra says. “If you don’t cut him off then he’s going to eat up the space. If you cut him off then he has the footwork to eat up more space.”

If anything defines these early days of Jaquez Jr.’s career, it’s those words Spoelstra continues to use. Yes, Jaquez Jr. is true-shooting 60.6 percent on 18.7 percent usage, with five games of at least 17 points on 50 percent shooting. Yes, Spoelstra playing him all 12 minutes in 10 fourth quarters, including last night in Toronto, is a big clue for how he feels about the way his rookie impacts the game, injuries on the roster or not. Yes, if he continues to shoot .588 or better on two-pointers he’ll become one of two rookies, joining Houston’s Jae’Sean Tate in 2020, to do so while standing 6-foot-7 or shorter, and his 38.5 percent shooting from three is a pleasant surprise given his 32.3 percent college averages with a shorter line. But we’re only 21 games in, with relatively low volume at that. A couple of bad games could be enough to make the three-point percentage look ordinary, and Jaquez Jr. would be hard pressed to shoot 55 percent from 3-to-10 feet given Kevin Durant, maybe the most efficient mid-range player in the league, has never topped 54.1 percent from that range. The numbers can, and will, change. What you expect to persist is the process, the way Jaquez Jr. devours the inches in front of him at his own pace and rhythm, Godzilla with a plus one, as calm as a seven-year veteran. Skills sustain percentages, but so does poise.

“A lot of young players are paint-by-numbers,” Spoelstra says. “They’re thinking either I’m just going to get to my spot and shoot or they’re trying to do whatever the gameplan may be and not reading what’s happening. He has a poise about him that he can be aggressive and then also read the defense. That’s just borne out of a lot of experience.”

There’s a reason that whenever Bam Adebayo has been asked about Jaquez Jr. his most common refrain is, “He’s not a normal rookie”.

When Jaquez Jr. first met Glass, also from Southern California, whether it was due to crossed wires or a miscommunication, neither was quite sure how things were going to go.

"At first I didn't think he liked me very much," Glass said.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I wasn’t going to get along with him,’ Jaquez Jr. says. “I didn’t think he liked me either.”

But now, after already spending so many workouts and film sessions together and Glass inviting Jaquez Jr. out to dinners with his wife and son as he’s done with other young players in the past, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Now it’s funny that we got that out the way,” Jaquez Jr. says. “I love EG. He’s like a big brother, uncle, a great figure in my life, especially with no family here, he’s already like family to me. He’s such a great basketball mind and he’s teaching me so much in film sessions.”

“He’s an amazing kid, loves basketball,” Glass says. “Cares about the game, cares about his teammates.

“[He’s] super eager to learn, wants to be great. And has a purity about it too. He’s finding ways to impact the game without making it all about him.”

While Glass has been impressed with Jaquez Jr.’s ability to take advice,, instruction and constructive criticism during film and apply those things to future games – Jaquez Jr. directly referenced the scouting report recently when asked about prioritizing attacking the paint against a weaker paint defense in the Pacers – he also knows what’s coming. Very rarely do rookies play significant roles on opposing scouting reports. On many of Jaquez Jr.’s scoring possessions, he’s beating his man one-on-one with no help coming. In some cases, help hasn’t even been in position to meet him in the paint. That will change. Rookies have to earn their respect, but if Jaquez Jr. keeps playing like this respect will come.

Take his pump fake, for instance. Why would a veteran NBA player even think about biting on the mid-range fake of a rookie instead of making him prove it?

“Especially since I’m new here,” Jaquez Jr. said during the first week of the season when asked about his fakes. “Not a lot of people probably do a scouting report [on me]. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t be talking about this right now, but it’s all good. It’s just a part of my game, you know?”

Jaquez Jr. is only going to see better defenders, and there have been times when he’s tried higher level guys and went nowhere. Like Tyler Herro, he’s eventually going to see more pressure, whether via blitzes or doubles. Like Bam Adebayo, he’ll see help coming from different angles in the post and, if the jumper percentages do fall off, teams will dare him to shoot. No matter how much of a gamer Jaquez Jr. may seem to be – he’s already sealed one victory with a last-minute corner three – proving yourself in the postseason is an entirely different beast.

The good news on that front is that Jaquez Jr. has already shown early signs of being able to adjust. When he gets stopped, he quickly finds an outlet and gets off the ball while maintaining the wherewithal to also clear the space and relocate. When he drew a double team in the post recently against the Indiana Pacers, he quickly surveyed the floor and found Orlando Robinson in the paint with a mismatch. When the low man comes slides into the paint on one of his drives, he’s quick to skip the ball over to the weak corner. Mistakes come and go as they will for any rookie, but the signs you want to see of quick, in-game processing speed are all there.

“He has that it quality, whatever that it is,” Spoelstra said after the first game of the season, when he had already given Jaquez Jr. the ball multiple times in the fourth quarter. “He’ll make the appropriate play. It’s not like a lot of young players where they’re either too fast or they’re only looking to score.”

Defensively there are reasons to be encouraged, too, though maybe not the ones you would first think of. While Jaquez Jr. is only allowing 0.79 points-per on 60 isolations defended, one of the better marks in the league, and has barely given up much of anything on 10 post-ups, we always have to caution small sample sizes within the HEAT’s system. By design, help is always at the ready in those situations and Jaquez Jr. is rarely left on an island. It’s easier to defend one-on-one when you have teammates on both flanks ready to jam up the driving lanes. That said, he’s shown himself to be a capable, competitive team defender with good hands and good instincts. There’s a chance he’ll be a switchable player, always added value next to Adebayo, not someone who has to be protected.

When Josh Richardson recently referred to Jaquez Jr. as Baby Jimmy it was met with rather mild reaction for such a strong statement only because Richardson wasn’t the only member of the franchise to invoke the name of the player. Even Spoelstra, while explicitly saying he wasn’t making a comparison, brought up Butler when speaking specifically about Jaquez Jr.’s ability to work those “areas in-between”. Let’s be clear about this, though. Jaquez Jr. is not Butler. We’re 21 games into his career with a long, long way to go. Butler has led Miami to multiple NBA Finals and another Conference Finals. Jaquez Jr.’s name has barely been on a scouting report. As exciting and encouraging as this early stretch is, it’s important and healthy to exhibit some capacity for slowing of the proverbial roll. Still, it’s hard not to see the similarities at times, even with something as simple as Jaquez Jr. hitting the same shot in a mismatch – down the road, Jaquez Jr. could prove mighty useful against switching defenses that have often jammed Miami up – with Ish Smith that Butler would.

This doesn’t quite feel like a Harold Miner, Baby Jordan situation. The similarities are more functional than aesthetic. If nothing else, Butler sees it too.

“Without a doubt,” Butler said when asked of the skillset comparison. “It’s good to see and it’s cool because he’s super young. I picked that type of stuff up when I was 28, 29. He has so much room to get better and he’s so confident. Always working on his game and he wants to make the right play every time. It’s not like he’s a rookie. He knows what it takes to win.”

After one year at Tyler Junior College and three years at Marquette, Butler came into the league as an older rookie, too, breaking out as an All-Star in his fourth season. Butler is a premier example for why we shouldn’t make the mistake of lowering the theoretical ceiling on a player simply due to age. Miami’s player development program has proven their own systemic belief in development at all ages, even if they typically draft young.

Nobody knows where Jaquez Jr. will go from here. He’s opened the door for some very positive possibilities, but the negative outcomes, to all varying degrees, still exist. A promising start could eventually be many things, but today it can’t be anything more than it is. All we can say for now is that Jaquez Jr. looks like a hit at the No. 18 pick, a hit as far as being a rotation player who impacts winning and has earned the trust of his coaches and teammates. And a cost-controlled hit at 18, given the luxury tax landscape of the league, for a team living inside its own window for contention can have franchise-altering implications.