Mario Hezonja has plenty of guidance from his teammates in how to adjust to the NBA. But Hezonja also has his own experience as he gets more playing time.
This is not the toughest time in Mario Hezonja’s amazingly long professional career.
Hezonja turned pro when he was 14 and so he has been through many of the ups and downs professional basketball players go through. As reporters peppered him with questions at the beginning of the season about experiencing the newness of this level and the NBA season, Hezonja almost scoffed, “Yes, I have experienced my first professional game before.”
Some time on the bench too is nothing new to him. This is not a typical rookie.
Still though, he sometimes needs the reminders a rookie needs. This is still the NBA after all. As Hezonja also said at the beginning of the season, experiencing the regular season was completely different from the preseason which was completely different from Summer League and so forth.
“ a lot, especially in this moment because I have been through this in Barcelona,” Hezonja said. “I know how to step up and adjust myself to the team to these kinds of things. It sucks, but I learned it in Barcelona because we went through a lot of things like this. I know how to reach to the game at this point when things are not going our way at all.”
The Magic have plenty of players who are not too far removed from their own rookie years and their own struggles in those moments. There are plenty of places for Hezonja to turn.
But when asked about how Hezonja was handling not playing early in the season, each player said Hezonja remained positive and kept working hard.
This was as much a part of the Hezonja scouting profile as the shooting and bravado. He was someone who said in his introductory press conference he was looking forward to having 24/7 access to a gym for the first time in his life.
Scott Skiles is a very demanding coach. It was clear even early on Hezonja needed a lot of work to refine his skills. His shooting was valuable, but it could easily get outweighed by shortcomings learning the defensive scheme. That is something most rookies would have trouble with as they learn the NBA.
The repeated refrain was to keep working and wait for the opportunity to play to come around.
“He’s a young player,” Tobias Harris said. “He has to keep coming in here every single day and work hard. When he gets his opportunity, take advantage of it. I’m just here making sure he continues to come in and put the work in to get better. There is definitely a learning curve for a young player, especially at his age. He is doing a good job.”
That opportunity appears to be coming around.
The Magic are struggling to make shots at the moment and Scott Skiles has gone back to using Hezonja. This time in a position that is both familiar and unfamiliar.
In the game against the Cleveland Cavaliers last Friday, Hezonja played a 20:35, the most he has played since the first week of the season. He fell out of the rotation shortly thereafter and disappeared completely when the Magic moved Victor Oladipo to the bench.
The Magic were experimenting in practice in the meantime, putting Hezonja in at point guard. They unleashed the experiment Monday against the Brooklyn Nets as Hezonja logged 18:11 and scored eight points. It was the first time he played 15 or more minutes in consecutive games.
And he began to produce.
It was shaky in the beginning bringing the ball up the floor for Hezonja. But he settled in nicely. His superb vision allowed him to pass the ball well and make plays. Hezonja finally had the ball in his hands.
The Magic are putting his aggressiveness and his playmaking to good use.
“I don’t mean this in a bad way, he can be overly aggressive, which we like about him,” Skiles said. “It’s always easy to turn a guy down then it is to turn a guy up. If we do it, we have to have a couple things that we do and keep it simple for him and see if he can make plays for other people.”
Hezonja still has growing up to do. But getting him some playing time with the ball in his hands seems to be a step in the right direction.
Hezonja said playing point guard is his natural position. While he has been shifted off the ball in recent years, he said he played point guard in Croatia and a bit in Barcelona. He said after the loss to the Cavaliers, not playing at the point guard was a bit strange to him.
Hezonja is still searching for playing time. This could be his opportunity.
“It’s not easy to not play,” Nikola Vucevic said. “Especially when you are a rookie, you are trying to go out there and prove yourself and show what you can do. When you are not playing, it’s not easy. He’s been pretty positive about it. It shows a lot about him to be a young guy to be able to handle it like that.”
The wheel of opportunity was going to spin around to Hezonja at some point in the season. The season is too long.
There was plenty of advice to dispense with not playing much his rookie year. Tobias Harris and Nikola Vucevic both got sporadic minutes their rookie years.
There were plenty of shoulders to lean on for advice in getting through the NBA grind.
Then again, Hezonja is not a typical rookie. He has been through it all in so many ways. And now that the opportunity for him to play has come back around, he knows exactly what he has to do with it.
Next: Successful offensive flow leads to blowout victory
“I talk to all of the guys here because they went through their own difficult times,” Hezonja said. “Mostly I learned from myself in Barcelona because I don’t think anybody faced what I faced in Barcelona. I learned a lot in Europe.”