The Heat have exercised their 2025-26 team options on winger Jaime Jaquez and forward Nikola Jovic, the team announced via Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press.
Jaquez is now guaranteed to earn $3,861,600 in ’25-26, which will be his third season, while Jovic will earn $4,445,417 during his fourth campaign. Jovic will also become eligible for a rookie scale extension during the 2025 offseason.
As our tracker shows, Miami is the first NBA team to make decisions on its rookie scale team options for the ’25-26 season. The outcome was a mere formality after both players had strong seasons in ’23-24.
The No. 18 overall pick of the 2023 draft, Jaquez had an excellent rookie campaign for the Heat, averaging 11.9 PPG, 3.8 RPG, 2.6 APG and 1.0 SPG in 75 regular season contests (28.2 MPG). His strong play earned him a spot on the All-Rookie First Team.
Jovic, who is two-plus years younger than Jaquez (21 vs. 23) despite being drafted a year earlier (No. 27 in 2022), spent the beginning of last season in the G League before emerging as a rotation regular down the stretch. In 46 regular season games (19.5 MPG), Jovic averaged 7.7 PPG, 4.2 RPG and 2.0 APG. The Serbian won a bronze medal this summer at the Olympics in Paris.
This year’s deadline for teams to pick up rookie scale options is Oct. 31.
