Heat’s Bam Adebayo juggles many responsibilities, but ‘impacting winning is the No. 1 thing’
Miami Heat All-Star center Bam Adebayo has a lot of responsibilities on the court. But he’s also willing to accept responsibility for his play, for better or worse.
Both have been on display in the eighth-seeded Heat’s second-round playoff series against the fifth-seeded New York Knicks.
After Adebayo blamed himself for the Heat’s Game 2 loss last week in New York that left the best-of-7 series tied 1-1, he responded with consecutive dominant all-around performances on both ends of the court in Games 3 and 4 in Miami to help push the Heat to a commanding 3-1 series lead.
Following Monday night’s 109-101 victory at Kaseya Center in Game 4, the Heat is now just one win from advancing to the Eastern Conference finals for the third time in four seasons and becoming just the second No. 8 seed to make it to the conference finals since the current 16-team NBA playoff format was instituted for the 1983-84 season.
“Obviously, I have a lot of responsibility,” Adebayo said, as the series now shifts to New York for Game 5 on Wednesday (7:30 p.m., TNT). “But that’s what this job asks for. That’s why I take a lot of blame because I have so many responsibilities trying to figure out how I can impact winning, bottom line. Impacting winning is the No. 1 thing I’m trying to do.”
Adebayo has a skill set that allows him to impact winning in a bunch of different ways, but that skill set also allows the Heat to demand a lot from Adebayo on offense and on defense.
In the second round against the Knicks, that means finding ways to stay aggressive on offense even when New York’s defense is loading up in the paint but also finding the open teammate when his own shot isn’t there. On defense, Adebayo has already played a lot of drop coverage, anchored the 2-3 zone for most of Game 2 and accepted the challenge of guarding Knicks All-Star forward Julius Randle.
But one of Adebayo’s most important tasks in this series against New York is to help control the boards against an elite offensive rebounding team. New York ended the regular season with the NBA’s second-highest offensive rebounding percentage (the percentage of available offensive rebounds a team grabs) and owns with the league’s highest offensive rebounding percentage in this year’s playoffs.
“He has to do all of it,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “He has to play pick-and-roll coverages, defend a great scorer in Randle, who’s relentless with his attacking and he knows how to draw fouls and is physical. And then when Bam is matched up against their fives, he has to block out and then rebound. And then if he’s out on the perimeter, he has to go back and rebound. He’s our best rebounder, so there’s no classic rebound that he has to get. He has to do all of the above.”
Adebayo has done all that and more in the last two games. He averaged 20 points, 12.5 rebounds and one assist per game while shooting 54.8 percent shooting from the field in Games 3 and 4. He has 25 rebounds in Games 3 and 4 after grabbing 16 rebounds in the first two games of the series.
“You can just see it when he’s walking in the door every day. In the mornings at shootarounds, he’s locked in and he’s focused,” Heat teammate Max Strus said of Adebayo. “He’s been here before several times, so he’s also willing to do whatever it takes to win. He’s stepped up huge. He’s making the right play in the pocket, he’s finishing, he’s making shots, he’s defending at a very high level and he’s rebounding at a very high level and taking care of his guy. He might not get the rebound every time, but he’s hitting his guy and getting him out of the paint. It’s been huge for us.”
Sometimes Adebayo isn’t the scorer some want him to be, with some pundits questioning why he took only 10 shots (en route to 15 points) in the Heat’s Game 2 loss to the Knicks. But Heat coaches and players have repeatedly made clear that Adebayo should not be judged solely by his scoring.
“The thing that is probably disappointing, not to our locker room or anything, is probably the average eye might not realize how dominant Bam’s game was to impact a win. He was dominant,” Spoelstra said after Adebayo produced a Game 3 stat line of 17 points and 12 rebounds on Sunday. “And the shame of it is in today’s day and age, people only view that as dominant if you score 40 points or more or have some kind of gaudy stat line. His fingerprints were all across that win and there’s a way that Bam does it with his efforts, his intensity, that competitive spirit that inspires other guys to do it.”
Adebayo insists that he doesn’t “listen to the criticism. They’re not in my shoes. The only people’s criticism I care about is the 15 players and the coaches and staff. Everybody else, I’m not on social media, I watch the games but I watch them on mute so I don’t have to hear all the commentary.”
The most unique aspect of Adebayo’s game doesn’t usually show up on the traditional boxscore. He’s one of the most versatile defenders in the NBA in terms of his ability to defend essentially every player on the court while also effectively toggling between various defensive schemes.
For example, Adebayo spent last season switching a very large chunk of the pick-and-rolls he defended. But this regular season, he played more drop coverage and anchored the zone more often than in past seasons.
This regular season, Adebayo played drop on 10.9 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions, zone on 10.2 possessions per game and switched screens on 12.1 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions. The personnel around Adebayo, including the loss of P.J. Tucker last offseason, has not called for as much switching this season.
That experience of floating between various schemes has paid off in this year’s playoffs. He has switched on only 4.9 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions, which is far less than normal.
“Bam’s versatility, ability to find multiple ways to impact our defense, guarding different kinds of players too whether it’s the four or the five, different schemes or whether we’re in the zone, he’s always been the guy who moves the needle the most,” Spoelstra said.
Along with allowing Adebayo to adjust to the different personnel he’s playing alongside, his incredible defensive versatility allows the Heat to switch schemes within games and series based on the opponent.
“You got to be versatile,” Adebayo said.
When Spoelstra went away from the Heat’s switch-heavy scheme at times this season, did Adebayo push back?
“I don’t really give push back,” Adebayo said. “Usually when Spo says this is going to be a good idea for us or this will benefit us down the road, my mindset is always thinking long term and how does this benefit us long term. It has in the playoffs and it has in both play-in games and we’ve needed it. So I don’t really question what scheme we’re doing.”
There’s a good reason why the Heat has played so much drop coverage in the playoffs. It was Adebayo’s most effective coverage this regular season, as opponents scored just 0.94 points per pick-and-roll when Adebayo defended in a drop.
“It makes the guards stay on the guards and I can stay on the bigs,” Adebayo said of that coverage. “So we don’t have a lot of switch out, kick it, kick it, swing, shoot and then the big guy gets the rebound or he gets a tip out for an offensive rebound. It just keeps me on the big, helps me box out and then we gang rebound.”
Adebayo continues to impact winning in his own unique way. The Heat stands just one win away from advancing to the East finals for the third time in four seasons with Adebayo as its starting center.
“Bam is a young player, but he has as much playoff experience as anybody in this league,” Spoelstra said. “He’s contributed to a lot of playoff wins. ... Usually that means you got to do a bunch of things that you typically don’t want to do. All those extra efforts and pursuits and defensive coverages, toughness, all that stuff, Bam does all those things.”
This story was originally published May 9, 2023 at 1:36 PM.
