I love this article. I saw Jaime play ONCE, for about 10 minutes, in the Summer League, at the pizza joint waiting for my pizza pie and I knew IMMEDIATELY that this kid was a Miami “Heat” guy. Nobody else on the floor that game was.
When the Miami Heat drafted rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr. in June, coaches and executives around the league rolled their eyes. Other teams had an opportunity to pick Jaquez—…who was expected to be an instant-impact player.
It’s often a struggle for coaches to get their front office and owners to draft players who are ready to play, because they prefer the mystery of high-upside guys. Everyone wants to draft the next Giannis Antetokounmpo and is not much interested in drafting the next high-quality rotation player.
“It’s one of those things where the Miami Heat go out and get a perfect Miami Heat player, and everyone just let them have him,” one assistant coach said. “A lot of us loved Jaime Jaquez, he has the IQ, he plays defense, he is versatile. But he is not gonna average 20 points and be an All-Star, so he gets pushed down the draft board. Your owner does not want to pick a four-year college guy. But a lot of us knew, this is guy who wins, this is a bad dude.”
…
“This is a very experienced, mature, savvy, competitive player,” coach Erik Spoelstra said of Jaquez, per the [Miami] Herald. “He’s been in a lot of really tough battles in college. To us, that matters. It doesn’t matter if it matters to anybody else.”
