Team USA gets gold at Paris Olympics on historic day for Heat. Adebayo and Jovic win medals
Miami Heat history was made on Saturday in the 2024 Olympics.
With the Team USA men’s basketball team defeating France 98-87 to win the gold medal for the fifth straight Olympics and Serbia earning a 93-83 win over Germany to come away with the bronze medal, Saturday’s results in Paris produced a historic day for the Heat.
▪ With Heat center Bam Adebayo on Team USA’s roster and Heat forward Nikola Jovic on Serbia’s roster, it marks just the second time in franchise history that multiple Heat players have won a medal in a single Olympics. The other time came in 2000 when Tim Hardaway and Alonzo Mourning both won the gold medal in the 2000 Olympics.
▪ Adebayo, who also won a gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021 in his first Olympic appearance, became the first player in franchise history to win multiple Olympic gold medals while with the Heat. The only other player to win multiple Olympic medals with the Heat is Dwyane Wade, who got bronze in 2004 and gold in 2008.
▪ With Jovic getting bronze in his Olympic debut, he became just the sixth different player to win an Olympic medal while with the Heat. The others on that list are Adebayo, Hardaway, LeBron James, Mourning and Wade.
▪ Erik Spoelstra became the first Heat coach in franchise history to be part of a coaching staff that has led a national team to an Olympic gold medal. Spoelstra served as an assistant coach for Team USA in his first Olympic experience, but he won’t get a gold medal because only athletes receive medals at the Olympics.
There were 10 early lead changes between Team USA and France, but Team USA pulled ahead 29-27 with 5:09 left in the first half and led the rest of the way to prevent France from becoming the first host nation to win men’s basketball gold since Team USA did it in 1996.
Team USA’s lead grew to as large as 14 points in the second half. But France cut the deficit to just three points with 3:04 remaining in the fourth quarter to make it a possession game down the stretch behind a game-high 26 points from Victor Wembanyama.
That’s when Stephen Curry exploded to score 12 of Team USA’s next 14 points with a flurry of threes to push the lead back up to nine with 35 seconds to play, putting the game away. Curry finished the win with a team-high 24 points on 8-of-12 shooting from three-point range.
Adebayo contributed two points and one rebound in nine minutes off the bench for Team USA in the gold medal-clinching victory. His only points of the game came on a dunk off an assist from Curry with 3:59 left in the second quarter.
Adebayo, 27, did not enter Saturday’s game for his usual first-quarter minutes. Instead, the three-time NBA All-Star and Heat captain entered for his first action of the day with 7:10 left in the second quarter, providing a spark to help Team USA outscore France by 11 points during a productive six-minute stint.
Adebayo again had to wait to get on the court in the second half, not playing in the third quarter. He entered for his first minutes of the second half with 6:29 left in the fourth period.
During Team USA’s six-game run at the Olympics to the gold medal, Adebayo averaged six points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.3 assists per game while shooting 53.3 percent from the field and 3 of 9 (33.3 percent) from behind the arc in a bench role. Team USA outscored opponents by 32 points with Adebayo on the court during the Paris Games.
Adebayo and Spoelstra embraced just seconds after winning gold on Saturday, going through this Olympic experience together with Team USA.
As for the 21-year-old Jovic, he barely played in Saturday’s bronze medal game. He didn’t score, with one rebound his only stat in 2:22 off the bench in Serbia’s win over Germany.
After missing Tuesday’s quarterfinal win over Australia because of an illness, Jovic played just 2:51 in Thursday’s semifinal loss to Team USA before logging two minutes on Saturday.
Before Jovic’s role shrunk in the knockout rounds, he averaged seven points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 16.7 minutes per game in a reserve role while shooting 43.8 percent from the field and 3 of 10 (30 percent) from three-point range in Serbia’s three group phase games during the Olympics.
Jovic, who is preparing for his third NBA season, almost didn’t play in the Olympics because of an injury. After being fully cleared to play basketball just days before the start of the Olympics, Jovic spent much of the Paris Games working his way back to form after recently returning from a sprained left ankle/fractured toe that he suffered in June during an offseason workout in Miami.
With Adebayo winning his second Olympic gold medal, the plan is for him to get a second banner in the Kaseya Center rafters to commemorate the accomplishment. Adebayo already has one banner up there for winning his first gold medal alongside four others celebrating players who won gold while with the Heat — Mourning (2000), Hardaway (2000), Wade (2008) and James (2012).
It remains to be seen whether Spoelstra will get his own banner at Kaseya Center as a Team USA assistant coach. This marks the first time the Heat has been presented with this decision, considering Spoelstra is the first coach in franchise history to be part of a coaching staff that has won an Olympic gold medal.
However, Jovic won’t get a banner since he didn’t win gold.
Next up for Adebayo, Jovic and Spoelstra is a bit of downtime before preparing for the upcoming season.
The Heat is scheduled to hold its annual media day on Sept. 30 before opening training camp on Oct. 1 to kick off the 2024-25 season. Through a promotional email sent out Saturday, the Heat revealed that it’s planning to hold training camp at Baha Mar in the Bahamas this year for the second time in the last three seasons.
This story was originally published August 10, 2024 at 5:22 PM.
