18, including Villanova’s Cam Whitmore, Arkansas’ Nick Smith Jr., Ohio State’s Brice Sensabaugh and Iowa’s Kris Murray.īut Simon said fit also mattered, with Jaquez of Heat DNA and therefore potentially of immediate use to coach Erik Spoelstra. I showed them what I was all about.”Īrguably, there were more polished prospects available at No. I think I shot the ball well, I played great defense. “I think I did really well in the workout. “I think I would be lying if I didn’t say that I had a sense that I was going to go to Miami,” he said. And I think it’s going to be a smooth transition coming here, because that’s all I’ve been doing for four years.”įrom his workout in Miami, Jaquez said the fit felt right. “At UCLA, I think those intangibles were really ingrained in my under Coach (Mick) Cronin.

And it’s about toughness and willingness to work, putting in that work to become the best player that could possibly be, and that’s what I’ve always been about. “I didn’t expect there not to be any challenges,” he said. “Not that he told us that, but from everything we’d heard, and we heard from his agency that his family talked about coming here when they recruited him last year, found that out actually (Thursday), after we drafted him.”įormally introduced Friday at Kaseya Center, Jaquez said he embraces the grind of the Heat’s culture. “He seems like he really wanted to play here,” Simon said of Jaquez. There also proved to be another similarity to Butler, who worked his way to the Heat in 2019 NBA free agency. He spends a lot of time with it, so I can see where he picked that up.”

“We talked to so many people out west, not only the UCLA program, but places where he worked out, and he’s a student of the game. Do Heat have even minimal expectations with Omer Yurtseven? Decision on qualifying offer could tell

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