Nigeria shocks Team USA in exhibition, with Miami Heat feel. How the Heat’s players fared
The Miami Heat’s season ended in late May. The start of summer league is still more than three weeks away. And the 2021-22 NBA season isn’t scheduled to open until Oct. 19.
But it felt a bit like a Heat game day Saturday night, with four players from the Heat’s season-ending roster in action during a pre-Olympic matchup between Team USA and the Nigerian national team.
The result was shocking.
Nigeria pulled off a massive upset in a 90-87 win over Team USA to open pre-Olympic exhibition play in Las Vegas on Saturday. According to Caesars Sportsbook by William Hill, USA Basketball was a 28.5-point favorite.
Nigeria made 20 threes, outscoring Team USA 60-30 from three-point range.
Heat center Bam Adebayo played for Team USA, and center Precious Achiuwa, forward KZ Okpala and Gabe Vincent played for Nigeria. Both countries have already qualified for the Olympics, which begin July 23.
All four Heat players started for their respective teams on Saturday.
Adebayo started alongside Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal, Jayson Tatum and Kevin Durant for Team USA.
Achiuwa, Okpala and Vincent started alongside Ike Nwamu and Josh Okogie.
Adebayo is already on the U.S. 12-man Olympic roster, while Nigeria plans to carry a roster of 16 players for its exhibition schedule. That means Achiuwa, Okpala and Vincent haven’t technically made the Olympic team yet, with Nigeria needing to cut its roster to 12 players for the Tokyo Games.
Here’s how the Heat’s players fared in Saturday’s exhibition game:
▪ Vincent, who also represented Nigeria at the 2019 World Cup, led the three-point barrage with a game-high 21 points on 6-of-8 shooting from deep. He also finished with two rebounds and four assists in 19 minutes.
“The win was great,” Vincent said. “We knew we could compete. We knew we could play well against a great team and we showed that tonight. ... We understand that it is an exhibition. We understand our ultimate goal was not to beat USA in this exhibition. It’s to medal in Tokyo, and our eyes are still set on that.”
An impressive showing in the Olympics would likely boost Vincent’s stock in the NBA. Since he finished this past season on a two-way deal, the Heat has to decide whether to extend a qualifying offer to Vincent to make him a restricted free agent this offseason and gain the right to match offers from other teams.
A qualifying offer doesn’t necessarily mean Vincent, 25, will be part of the Heat’s 15-man roster next season. The qualifying offer could turn into another two-way contract unless Miami is forced to match standard contract offers Vincent receives as a restricted free agent.
This past season with the Heat, Vincent averaged 4.8 points while shooting 37.8 percent from the field and 30.9 percent on threes, 1.1 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 50 regular-season games (seven starts).
Vincent’s outside shooting went cold this past season, but his growth as a perimeter defender impressed. And, as it turns out, his outside shooting was the catalyst behind his performance on Saturday.
▪ With Adebayo playing alongside four elite shooters almost every minute he’s on the court with Team USA, he’s going to have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of the space that creates in the paint.
Adebayo was used in a lot of pick-and-roll sets and rolled hard to the basket into that space against Nigeria.
With Achiuwa defending him for most of the game, Adebayo finished with 11 points on 4-of-7 shooting, five rebounds, one assist and one steal in 17 minutes. He made one of the two midrange jumpers he attempted.
While Adebayo started the game, he didn’t finish it. Team USA coach Gregg Popovich subbed Adebayo out with 2:46 to play and went with a lineup that featured Draymond Green as the big in the final minutes of the contest.
▪ Achiuwa finished with three points on 1-of-4 shooting and seven rebounds in 17 minutes, with his only made shot coming on an open three-pointer. He attempted just one three with the Heat this past season and missed it.
But Achiuwa’s most impressive moment of the night came in the second quarter, when he came from the weak side to swat away a Durant dunk attempt with his left hand.
Nigeria head coach Mike Brown, who is also an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors, has complimented Achiuwa’s defense in training camp. He noted recently that it looked like Achiuwa guarded seven players on one practice possession.
“Only five were on the floor,” Brown said with a laugh. “I don’t know, he guarded two other guys on the sideline and then he got the block at the end of the possession. I went up to him afterwards, I said, ‘Precious, that’s what we need from you.’”
Achiuwa also gabbed a critical defensive rebound with 1.4 seconds to play to help Nigeria hold on for the upset win.
Achiuwa, 21, is one of only five Heat players who entered this summer with a guaranteed salary for next season. He averaged five points on 54.4 percent shooting, 3.4 rebounds and 0.5 blocks in 61 regular-season games (four starts) as a rookie with the Heat this past season.
▪ Okpala, 22, did not do much offensively Saturday. He finished scoreless, shooting 0 of 4 from the field and 0 of 3 on threes in 20 minutes.
But Okpala (6-8 and 215 pounds) proved to be an effective and very versatile defender. He started the game on the 6-2 Lillard and entered in the final minute of the fourth quarter to defend the 6-10 Durant.
“KZ is a remarkable talent,” Brown said recently. “This is a young man that has, in my opinion, a chance to be, obviously, an elite defender. But, and these are high expectations, in the short time that I’ve had him, he can be a Defensive Player of the Year type candidate once he figures some things out to get consistent minutes on the floor. His length, his athleticism, his size, his strength, his want to play defense and be great at it is off the charts.”
This game experience with Nigeria is important for Okpala because he has yet to find a consistent role with the Heat in his first two NBA seasons. He has played more minutes in the G League (572) than in the NBA (473) during his professional career.
Like Adebayo and Achiuwa, Okpala is among the five Heat players who entered this offseason with a guaranteed salary for next season.
▪ According to Tim Reynolds from the Associated Press, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and forward Udonis Haslem were in attendance to watch Saturday’s exhibition game. Spoelstra served as the Team USA Select Team head coach this past week.
This story was originally published July 10, 2021 at 11:24 PM.
