Inside Adebayo’s offensive renaissance, and his interesting assessment of the situation
As it turns out, there was no need to call a search party to find Bam Adebayo’s missing jumper, no need to fret about whether his early season offensive regression would become a long-term problem.
The November and December shooting struggles are long since forgotten. The torchbearer of Heat culture has been riding an offensive roll for six weeks, and he was in vintage form on Wednesday, scoring a season-high 34 points on 11-for-18 shooting (including three for five on threes) in a 112-107 loss to Cleveland. He’ll look to continue the surge when Minnesota visits Kaseya Center on Friday (8 p.m., FanDuel Sports Sun).
Adebayo’s sustained offensive renaissance began in mid-January, the moment that Erik Spoelstra moved Kel’el Ware into the starting lineup at center and shifted Adebayo to power forward. But that resurgence has continued with Ware sidelined this week by a sprained knee.
Asked if playing alongside Ware has helped him offensively, Adebayo said it has, unquestionably, for one big reason:
“It gave me more energy to play offense,” he said. “I’m not in every pick-and-roll. Obviously, he’s guarding the five [the center]. A lot of four men [power forwards] don’t and do the things that fives do. For me, it definitely let a load off me where I definitely could focus more on scoring.”
The difference in Adebayo’s numbers before the lineup change, and after, are striking:
▪ In his first 40 games, without Ware starting, Adebayo averaged 15.7 points.
In the past 19 games (including 17 with Ware starting), he has averaged 21.3 points per game.
▪ Adebayo scored at least 20 points just 10 times in his first 40 games. He has reached the 20-point mark on 10 occasions in the next 19 games and scored 18 or 19 five other times.
▪ In those first 40 games, Adebayo shot 45.4 percent overall, including 49.5 percent on two-pointers and just 29.7 percent on catch-and-shoot attempts.
In the 19 games since, Adebayo shot 55.1 percent from the field, 59.4 percent on two-point attempts and 53.2 percent on catch-and-shoot attempts.
“Bam has been a monster for us,” Spoelstra said. “He’s doing it on both ends. He’s scoring, facilitating, handling, organizing our offense and [scoring at] the end of offense.”
While Adebayo says Ware’s presence has helped his offensive game, there’s obviously more to it, because Adebayo had his best scoring game of the season without Ware on Wednesday and because he has produced strong offensive numbers in recent years without Ware or (for the most part) without any 7-foot, defensively gifted center playing alongside him.
Adebayo averaged 19.1, 20.4 and 19.3 points over the past three seasons, while shooting 55.7, 54 and 52.1 percent.
This season, his overall numbers are lower (17.5 points per game, 49 percent shooting) because of his subpar start to the season, but also because he has attempted 154 threes (and made only 31.2 percent of them) after shooting just 6, 12 and 42 threes the previous three seasons.
His improved offensive efficiency during the past six weeks has left his two-point shooting percentage at 52.8, identical to what it was last season. He’s shooting 45.1 percent from 10 to 15 feet, up from 41.6 last season.
When Adebayo struggled offensively earlier this season, he said there was never a moment of desperation or exasperation. And he didn’t make any tweaks to his mechanics.
“I feel like we all go through that stretch,” he said this week. “It’s a part of basketball. If you ask anybody have they ever had a tough day at their job, they’re going to be like, ‘yeah.’ That one month was very tough for me. I kept the same approach, didn’t let it get to me. A lot of people would be like, ‘what’s wrong? He’s not who he is.’ But narratives flip.”
So did Adebayo really never worry about the extended slump?
Worry “for what?” he responded. “We are talking about six years, an [expletive] six years body of work, from the time I started playing basketball until that point. I’m going to let a month span of the basketball not going in affect me?”
In Adebayo’s defense, he had a dozen very good offensive games in the six weeks before Ware was inserted in the lineup, mixed with the occasional clunker.
When he was in an offensive malaise, he said it was not a case of “playing bad basketball. It was not me committing reckless turnovers or not doing my job on defense. I’m doing everything else. The shot just wasn’t going in, and you live with that.
“You have to be optimistic about it because if you let it, it can get to you. You also can start failing at other areas of your job. I wear a lot of hats here. If something is not working, I can’t just focus on that one thing. I’ve got a lot of other things and a lot of other people to worry about.”
New Heat players have gained an extra appreciation playing alongside him.
Point guard Davion Mitchell calls Adebayo the best defender in the league because “he can guard from the Joel Embiids to the Shae [Gilgeous-] Alexanders. If you can guard those guys.. I feel you’re the best defender in the league. He can be physical with the best of them. He can block shots, can make the shot hard on the perimeter, he can move his feet…. He’s the leader on the team.”
Kyle Anderson, acquired by Miami on Feb. 6, appreciates “how much of a leader he is, how vocal he and Tyler [Herro] are and how much they care. You don’t see that all the time with big time players or ‘the guys’ on the team. To see that from Tyler and Bam and how much they communicate and how they are off the court, I appreciate that.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 9:19 AM.
