Why Mother’s Day is one of the most important days of the year for Heat’s Bam Adebayo
One of the most important games of the Miami Heat’s season will come on one of the most important days of the year for Bam Adebayo.
The Heat is scheduled to face the Boston Celtics at TD Garden on Sunday afternoon in a nationally televised matchup full of playoff implications. Sunday is also Mother’s Day, which Adebayo is well aware of.
“Mother’s Day to me is up there with Thanksgiving,” the Heat’s star center said. “I get to love my mom even more on this one day. On Mother’s Day, it’s kind of like an extension of her birthday. Just thinking about all the things that she has done for me and how she sacrificed for me. It’s one of those days, all the memories pop back in my head of all the hours she put in trying to make ends meet.”
To know Adebayo is to understand his well-documented relationship with his mother, Marilyn Blount. As a single mother working as a cashier at the Acre Station Meat Farm, Blount raised Adebayo in a single-wide trailer home in Little Washington, North Carolina.
Blount moved to Lexington, Kentucky, when Adebayo made the jump to play at the University of Kentucky and then followed him to Miami when he was drafted by the Heat in 2017, and they lived in the same downtown Miami condominium building but on different floors for the first three seasons of Adebayo’s NBA career. Blount can also be found supporting Adebayo at most Heat home games. And Adebayo often wears a gold necklace featuring a pendant of Blount holding him as a child.
Their relationship is special.
“I think it’s beautiful, man,” Heat veteran Udonis Haslem said of Adebayo’s bond with his mother. “Because no matter how much success he has, his first love is his mom. That’s the same thing I always had. It didn’t matter how much success I had. It didn’t matter what I did. That lady was always going to be No. 1. No matter what he does or what he accomplishes, I see that same look in his eye. That’s rare, man. These days, guys get money, fame and success and there’s a lot of female activity they can be focusing on. But for him to keep his eye on that lady the way he does, that just brings joy to my heart.”
TURNING DREAM INTO REALITY
One of the first things Adebayo, 23, did when he signed the richest contract in Heat history — a five-year, $163 million max contract extension that could grow to as much as $195 million — last offseason? Adebayo surprised Blount with a new house in Miami for her 56th birthday in early December.
It’s a moment that he worked to make a reality since he was a freshman in high school, and it’s a moment that tested Adebayo emotionally in the minutes leading up to the surprise.
“It felt like when I walked on the Finals court,” Adebayo said. “It was like chills because a lot of people don’t get to feel this experience. It was just one of those things where it was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’ Because when I get that feeling, I know that’s usually a basketball feeling. Usually when you get those types of chills and that type of feeling, you just tip the ball off and you have a couple of possessions and then it’s gone. I didn’t have a basketball. So the whole time, I have this bottled up energy and I don’t know where to put it.”
Adebayo told Blount they were meeting friends for dinner, but they stopped to see houses along the way. The first house was intentionally chosen, to throw her off, as one she would not approve of.
“I showed her one house and I was like, ‘Whatever you show her, just make sure it’s ugly,’” Adebayo remembered with a laugh. “She doesn’t really like houses that don’t have yards, so I was like: ‘Just make sure this house doesn’t have a yard or porch.’”
But the second house was hers, and it had a yard and a porch.
“I’m trying to keep myself together in the car,” Adebayo said. “I don’t know whether to cry, I’m nervous, stomach has butterflies up until she walked in. I felt like when she walked in and she realized it was hers, that was my relation to going up and down the court and the chills are gone. Because now the moment is there, you’re in it.”
As a result of Blount recently moving into her new home, she no longer lives in the same condominium building as Adebayo.
Adebayo doesn’t return home from Heat road trips to a refrigerator filled with some of his favorite home-cooked meals like banana pudding, baked ziti, and beans and hot dogs as often anymore. But Adebayo did make sure the house he purchased for his mother included an extra bedroom that he could call his.
“That was the selfish part in me with that gift,” Adebayo said. “I make my schedule based on how I’m going to see my mom. So we test at 5 p.m., and that’s when the traffic starts to hit. So I go to my mom’s, sit there and kick it and then go home. So like I always mix and match the times I see my mom.”
Blount estimates that she sees Adebayo more these days than when they lived in the same downtown Miami building.
“Even when he goes on his road trips, he always comes and sees me before he goes on his road trip,” Blount said of Adebayo stopping by her house before he heads to the airport to fly out with the team.
‘SHE NEVER SHOWED WEAKNESS’
Adebayo, who was the 14th overall pick in the 2017 draft, made his first All-Star Game last season and is one of just two players in the NBA averaging at least 18 points, nine rebounds, five assists, one steal and one block this season. Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo is the only other player on that list.
Adebayo credits the work ethic behind his success to lessons he learned from his mother.
![Miami Heat’s Bam Adebayo’s posted on Instagram, photos of the moment he surprised his mother with this caption Sunday night: “SCREAMING HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY WHOLE [world and heart]. You Deserve This And Much More.”](https://www.miamiherald.com/public/latest-news/x9g217/picture251207319/alternates/FREE_1140/IMG_Bam_Instagram_mom_ho_2_1_98JMT3VM_L619146174 "IMG_Bam_Instagram_mom_ho_2_1_98JMT3VM_L619146174")
“I never saw my mom really show weakness. In my 23 years of being on this earth, I’ve probably only seen my mom cry five times,” Adebayo said. “So when I was younger, I never realized that we struggled until I got into high school and started seeing when I went to other people’s houses that I don’t have the same things that they have. So you get older and you start realizing things and you start putting pieces together. To the point, I was like, ‘Oh, no. We’re not wealthy. We are struggling actually.’
“But my mom put me in a place where I thought my crib was a mansion. I appreciated it because she taught me how to get through hard times without just putting a face to it and everybody knowing your body language. So the grit and determination comes from her off of that alone. She never showed weakness.”
Now in a position to help others, Adebayo began the BAM Foundation in 2017 to provide support and expand opportunities for single mothers and their children. In December, Adebayo showed up at the Miami house of Travillia Bogan, a single mother with two sets of twins who was on the verge of being evicted, and gifted her with a year’s worth of rent.
“It was a great feeling just because my mom never had that,” Adebayo said. “My mom never could get a random phone call and be like, ‘Yeah, somebody is paying off a year of expenses and you can have a rest.’ My mom never had that luxury or that type of situation happen. I know what it feels like when a mom is struggling trying to pay bills, take care of kids, make sure they eat, clothes on their backs, make sure she eats, cleans and then make sure they’re comfortable. I know what that feels like. I’ve seen that struggle before. So when I see certain situations that are similar to mine, I want to give them that helping hand that my mom couldn’t have.”
The single-wide trailer home that Blount and Adebayo lived in together continues to serve as a central part of their relationship. Both have framed photos of the trailer hanging up on one of their walls.
“I put it in the living room,” Adebayo said. “Because whoever I invited over and whoever came to my apartment, no matter if you knew me since two days ago or five years, you need to know where I come from and why I act the way I act and the way my personality is and how I go about certain stuff in my life.”
A framed photo of the trailer was already hanging up on the wall when Blount first walked into her new house.
“When Bam turned the light on, I said, ‘Oh my God, Bam.’ The first thing I saw was the picture of the trailer on the wall,” Blount recalled. “That’s what got me. That’s when I knew that it was my house because you walk in, that’s the first thing you can see hanging on the wall. It was the picture of the trailer.”
A DIFFERENT KIND OF MOTHER’S DAY
When Adebayo was a kid, he celebrated Mother’s Day with handmade cards and gifts — Blount has held on to most of them.
Mother’s Day gifts are different these days. But one thing that has remained the same is they always sit down and enjoy a meal together on the holiday.
“It’s the first Mother’s Day without Bam in 23 years,” Blount said of being away from Adebayo on Sunday. “We always sit down and eat dinner.”
Instead, that dinner came Wednesday since Adebayo will be with the Heat in Boston this weekend.
“We never missed a Mother’s Day together,” Blount said. “I said Bam, ‘You might not be here with me, but I do want to eat dinner with you.’”
Blount’s gift will come Sunday, though, even with Adebayo away.
“I got a surprise for her she’ll really like,” Adebayo said with a sense of excitement.
Some things never change, and the importance of Mother’s Day for Adebayo and Blount is one of those things.
“I always told him, you still act the same,” Blount said. “Don’t let money change you, you change money. Don’t let money change you. I always told him that. Even though you have something, you still act the same.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2021 at 11:48 AM.
