After Miami Heat star Nikola Jovic suffered a broken hand in the loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Feb. 23, there was news released from the team about his potential timeline. With the Heat losing to the Hawks, there’s more bad news as Jovic will be out for an extended period.
In the loss to the Bucks, Jovic left early in the game and had an X-ray at halftime which it revealed that he had a fracture on the second metacarpal in his right hand as said by a Miami spokesperson to ClutchPoints. This was said once again by the team, but also mentioned how he will be “re-evaluated in four weeks.”
“It has been determined that Nikola Jović suffered a fracture in the second metacarpal of his right hand,” the team wrote on their official X, formerly Twitter, account. “He will be in a splint and re-evaluated in four weeks. He suffered the injury against the Milwaukee Bucks this past Sunday on February 23. Jović was evaluated by chief of hand surgery Dr. Elizabeth Ann Ouellette in collaboration with HEAT team physician Dr. Harlan Selesnick at Doctors Hospital Surgery Center in Miami.”
This season, Jovic had been averaging 10.7 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 2.8 assists in 25.1 minutes per game while shooting 45.6 percent from the field and 37.1 percent from three-point range.
Heat’s Erik Spoelstra on Nikola Jovic breaking his hand
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The Heat have had a rough past handful of games and the Jovic injury hasn’t helped either as he was used as a crucial part of the team’s bench. Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra has been in the process of figuring out rotations and now with Jovic out, it’ll be more planning to find someone to fill the void.
Spoelstra as well as team captain Bam Adebayo spoke after the loss to the Bucks and shared his emotional reaction about Jovic having a broken right hand.
“I feel for Niko,” Spoelstra said via video from Naveen Ganglani. “I know how much he has put into this. He’s had a couple injuries previously. This has nothing to do with it. He’s not snakebitten or anything like that. He actually was playing with some force tonight. I thought he got hit on the leg, he kept on holding his leg. And I was shocked by the prognosis on it. But we’ll see how long it will take and in the meantime other guys will have to step up.”
At any rate, the Heat is 26-30 which puts them ninth in the Eastern Conference as they now head back home for a majority of the remainder of the season. It starts Wednesday night when Miami takes on the Atlanta Hawks.
