Kendrick Nunn’s bounceback didn’t surprise those with the Heat who see behind the scenes

Cold spells like the one Kendrick Nunn suffered through to start the new year haven’t come often for the guard ever in his playing career.

He was a superstar in high school, one of the deadliest three-point shooters in the country in college and one of the best players in the NBA G League when he played for the Santa Cruz Warriors last season.

The start to his NBA career was equally charmed. He scored at least 17 points in each of his first four games to vault into the Rookie of the Year conversation and his disaster shooting nights were mostly just one-offs until January began.

He started the month by going 1 of 9 from 3-point range in a win against the Toronto Raptors on Jan. 2 and his slump carried on all the way until this week. Nunn only made more than one three-pointer once in the first six games of the month before the Miami Heat asked him to rescue the team with 33 points against the San Antonio Spurs.

“Every time he shot it tonight after about the third time, it looked like it was going down,” coach Erik Spoelstra said Wednesday after the Heat’s 106-100 win against the Spurs in Miami. “We needed some more offensive punch and he was able to get into a great rhythm.”

There were signs of the oncoming breakout Sunday when he scored 20 points in a loss to the New York Knicks, but otherwise Nunn had scored more than 15 points just once in his previous 11 games.

In the same stretch, he failed to crack double figures twice and had seven games in which he shot worse than 30 percent from three-point range.

Nunn jolted back alive Wednesday at AmericanAirlines Arena. With the Heat’s offense struggling, the guard exploded for 33 points — the second most of his young career — while going 13 of 18 from the field and 5 of 7 from deep. In the first half alone, Nunn went 8 of 8 with four threes to score 20 points — a stat line never before managed by an undrafted rookie.

The rest of Nunn’s teammates combined to go 28 of 70 from the field and 12 of 33 from long range.

Star wing Jimmy Butler went just 4 of 11 for 12 points. Star post player Bam Adebayo went 6 of 15 for 14 points. With fellow rookie Tyler Herro out with a left knee bruise, Miami (28-12) needed everything Nunn could offer to fend off an upset at home.

He’ll hit the midpoint of his rookie season Friday against the Oklahoma City Thunder at 8 p.m. and Nunn has apparently crashed through the rookie wall.

“That’s the game,” Nunn said Wednesday. “I do see what guys are doing, of course, but I’m going to be aggressive regardless if guys are on or off. That’s my job for them. What I want to do for them is be aggressive and they allow me to.”

The Heat never worried about Nunn, even as the off shooting nights became more frequent in 2020.

The 24-year-old’s unorthodox path to the NBA led him to Miami largely because the Heat believed in his work ethic and now it’s seeing the same thing in-season. Nunn’s success is largely predicated on his ability to shoot threes, so he has spent time behind the scenes in the last few weeks working out the “kinks” ailing his jumper.

Spoelstra said Miami saw a bounce-back game like this coming. Guard Goran Dragic said he and all Nunn’s teammates have just been urging the guard to keep firing.

“We encourage him. He’s still a rookie and we all know that at some point of the season you’re going to hit that rough patch and we’re there for him,” Dragic said Wednesday. “Just keep doing your job, come in every day, do your job, stay consistent and good things going to happen. And he did it from Day 1 to now and you can see he’s evolving as a player and we really like to have him.”

As the Heat has shifted its focus to improving its defense, performances like Nunn’s on Wednesday could become even more important. With Butler shooting his worst field-goal percentage since 2014 and Herro’s status in question for Miami’s game against the Thunder (23-18) in Oklahoma City, Nunn and Dragic are the only two other healthy players who score more than 40 percent of their field goals unassisted.

Six of the Heat’s 11 lowest scoring games of the season have come in the last month as Nunn has regressed. If he’s back to early-season form, it elevates Miami’s offensive ceiling. The Heat has reason to think its breakout performer is back.

Really, it doesn’t feel like he ever left.

“He’s been putting in these kind of shooting performances behind the scenes and in practice,” Spoelstra said. “Maybe not to this extent, but he just stays with it, and he doesn’t get caught up in all the highs and lows that can happen during a season.”

▪ Forward Justise Winslow (lower back bone bruise) did not travel with the Heat for its two-game trip that begins Friday against the Thunder and ends Sunday against the Spurs. The back injury has already forced Winslow to miss 18 of the Heat’s past 19 games. There is still no definitive timetable for Winslow’s return.

Herro is listed as questionable for Friday’s game against the Thunder because of a left knee bruise.

This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 4:43 PM.