Kevin Love won’t make his season debut on Wednesday. The veteran power forward has already been ruled out by the Heat for their road game in Phoenix due to “return to competition reconditioning,” the Miami Herald’s Anthony Chiang tweets.
Love recently returned to the team after missing the first few weeks due to personal reasons. Jaime Jaquez Jr. will also miss Wednesday’s contest due to a stomach illness.
Jaquez didn’t travel to Phoenix but is expected to rejoin the group at some point during the team’s six-game trip, Chiang adds in a separate tweet. Love did make the trip to Phoenix and is expected to make his season debut during the road swing.
Here’s more on the Heat:
- The team has a third-quarter problem and might need to tweak the lineup to fix it, according to the Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson. Replacing Nikola Jovic with Jaquez or Haywood Highsmith might be the simplest way to address the problem. As Jackson notes, Miami has outscored opponents by 17 points in the first quarter, 25 points in the second quarter and 17 in the fourth but has been outscored by 52 in the third. The Heat are the NBA’s lowest scoring team in the third quarter.
- Despite the absences of Love and Jaquez on Monday, coach Erik Spoelstra went 11 deep into his bench during the first quarter alone, Chiang notes. Highsmith and rookie Pelle Larsson were the first two players off the bench, followed by Alec Burks, Thomas Bryant, Josh Richardson and Duncan Robinson.
- Larsson continues to look like one of the steals of the draft. The No. 44 overall pick had 13 points, two rebounds and two assists in 25 minutes on Monday, Chiang adds. “He is a two way player,” Spoelstra said. “Even though he’s a rookie by NBA standards, he has a great deal of competitive experience. He’s savvy, has the toughness we like, can guard multiple positions.”
- The Heat’s first-rounder, Kel’el Ware, has been forced to take a wait-and-see approach. He’s only made two brief appearances off the bench. “I can’t control what the Coach does,” Ware told Chiang. “So whenever coach Spo decides to put me in, I’ll be ready.”