MIAMI — The choice of words from Erik Spoelstra was not accidental; with the Heat coach, the verbiage rarely is.
So after the initial taste of first-round pick Kasparas Jakucionis in an NBA game setting, Spoelstra went for the highest form of flattery that can be offered of a playmaker.
“He’s courageous enough to try to make the play,” Spoelstra said in the wake of Wednesday night’s 112-107 preseason loss to the San Antonio Spurs at Kaseya Center, when the No. 20 pick out of Illinois last June closed with eight points and 10 assists.
In recent years, save for the few months when it actually worked with Kyle Lowry, pure playmakers have been the exception for the Heat. There instead has been center Bam Adebayo orchestrating offense from the elbow, power forward Nikola Jovic attempting to make things happen in transition, and a variety of combo guards masquerading as point guards.
But Wednesday night, in a preseason debut delayed for two games by a wrist issue sustained in training camp, Jakucionis was given the ball.
And he ran with it.
And tossed it around.
And energized a Heat offense that for years has been in need of energizing.
“You see his tenaciousness and just his approach to everything is full speed,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat now in the midst of a three-day break before resuming their exhibition schedule Sunday against the Orlando Magic at Kia Center. “He has a kamikaze element to him.
“He’s like jet fuel. He’s just like, immediately, that you feel like his energy, his speed. It was great to have him out there. It was fun. It was fun, those minutes.”
Particularly for center Kel’el Ware, the somewhat maligned second-year 7-footer whose development arguably has been suppressed by the Heat’s lack of a dynamic playmaker.
Of Jakucionis’ 10 assists Wednesday night, seven went to Ware, including five in the fourth quarter.
“I feel like he’s more of a pass-first point guard,” Ware said. “When you got a big that’s a lob threat and is able to create space for not me, but just him as well, that’s just a great chemistry that we’ll be able to build.”
Although the two played together in summer league in July, the time together had been limited since, particularly with Jakucionis missing the latter stages of last week’s training camp at Florida Atlantic University.
But Wednesday the two sparked the second unit on a night the starters were largely uneven.
“To be honest,” Jakucionis said, “I didn’t play a lot with him in the offseason, summer league obviously. But here we didn’t get to play a lot. But now I’m enjoying it a lot and hopefully we will get more and more connection with each other.”
Which could wind up leaving Ware with the second unit and elevating Jakucionis to that unit.
“I think it’s more a product of Kel’el’s great hands, his vertical threat,” Spoelstra said of the connection. “Kas sees it. He can deliver it. But he also can deliver the pocket pass, kind of set you up and let the big do the rest of the work. That’s a good quality.
“And if you have kind of a synergy between a couple of guys, that’s definitely a good thing, particularly young guys. That’s probably sometimes tougher to get.”
The rap on Jakucionis going into the draft, and even the reason some suspected he fell from a projected lottery slot to No. 20, was a high turnover rate. Wednesday night there were three.
But Spoelstra said some of that is the price of creativity, creativity that at this point he does not want to stifle.
“He has a vision,” Spoelstra said. “And I think that led to some of the turnovers probably in college. He’s willing. He’s courageous enough to try to make the play. So he has the vision and he’s willing to try to make it.”
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Daring, Spoelstra said, but also at other times not too daring, which is the compromise sought.
“Sometimes he just makes the easy play, he just gets off it,” Spoelstra said. “And that’s what receivers like to get, is just kind of an early ball they can go make a play. He did that several times, pitching ahead. So I think he did a lot of things to get the 10 assists. But you can see the natural connection between him and Kel’el.”
With so many guards on the roster, the thought was more of a developmental season, what with Spoelstra having the option to cycle through the veteran presences of Tyler Herro, Davion Mitchell, Norman Powell, Dru Smith and Jaime Jaquez Jr., among others.
But Wednesday night’s debut showed that there yet could be rookie moments for the 19-year-old out of Lithuania.
“I don’t expect anything,” Jakucionis said of what might come next. “I’m just going there and trying to do my job. The situation I get, I try to do that. Whatever Coach tells me, I’m trying to do.”
Still early, but the chemistry’s hard to miss pic.twitter.com/B924SpBVNI
— Miami HEAT (@MiamiHEAT) October 9, 2025
