Is elite defense of Heat’s Bam Adebayo again being overlooked? ‘The goalposts always move for me’
Amid the Miami Heat’s frustrating up-and-down play and injury issues this season, one thing remains and consistent: As long as center Bam Adebayo is on the roster and healthy, the Heat is going to have one of the NBA’s top defenses.
Following Tuesday night’s 124-98 blowout win against the struggling Brooklyn Nets at Kaseya Center, the Heat (33-29) entered Wednesday with the NBA’s fourth-ranked defensive rating (allowing 111.3 points per 100 possessions) this season. The Heat is on track to finish with a top-10 defensive rating for the eighth time in Adebayo’s nine-year NBA career that has been spent entirely with Miami.
But considering that Adebayo has led the Heat to a top-five defensive rating this season while playing as part of 19 different starting lineups because of the team’s injuries, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra believes this has been one of Adebayo’s best defensive seasons.
“This year, I think, as much as any year, that Bam has proven that he should be in the consideration for Defensive Player of the Year because of that reason,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat set to host the Nets for a second straight game on Thursday at Kaseya Center (7:30 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun). “All the moving parts, he’s defended in every scheme at the highest level. When he’s on the floor, our defense is probably top two or three. And when he’s off the court, it’s been a little bit different.”
The Heat has allowed 108.6 points per 100 possessions with Adebayo on the court this season for a defensive rating that would rank third among teams in the NBA.
“He’s great defensively every single year,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said. “I mean, he’s the anchor. He’s been the anchor for our defense for the seven years that I’ve been here.”
While Adebayo’s defense hasn’t slipped, he has received less recognition recently for his work on that end of the court.
After making one of the NBA’s All-Defensive teams in five straight seasons (four seasons on the All-Defensive Second Team and one season on the All-Defensive First Team), Adebayo didn’t make an All-Defensive team last season for the first time since his second NBA season in 2018-19. Adebayo also didn’t receive a vote for “the best defensive player in the NBA” in this year’s NBA preseason survey of general managers.
“I think people get tired of seeing consistency,” Adebayo, 28, said. “It gets boring when you see somebody just doing it over and over and over again. But also the criteria has shifted as I’ve gotten older in this league. You got guys making it that aren’t making the playoffs, they’re bottom of the league in records. So you see some crazy stuff happening now.
“I don’t know if it’s just voter fatigue, but I’m always going to be First-Team All-Defense. That’ll never change, no matter what the voters say. My peers know it. ... I’ve always been this. This is who I am. This is how I got in the league. This is how I got minutes. So that side will never go away.”
Adebayo has established himself as one of the NBA’s best and most versatile defenders at 6-foot-9 and 255 pounds. Not only has he proven he can effectively guard every position on the court, but he also possesses a unique versatility to toggle between different defensive schemes from possession to possession and game to game.
Adebayo ranks in the NBA’s 97th percentile for estimated defensive plus-minus this season. He also ranks 10th in defensive win shares this season, which is an estimate the number of wins a player contributes to their team specifically through defensive performance.
But Adebayo has never won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award, and there’s little Defensive Player of the Year buzz for Adebayo at the moment despite the Heat featuring a top-five defense this season. San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama is the betting favorite for the honor this year and Adebayo is tied for the sixth-best odds to win the award, according to BetMGM.
“The goalposts always move for me. We got a top-five defense, and it’s like I’ve heard nothing about it,” said Adebayo, who has yet to win the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award during his career. “I do think I should be on an All-Defensive team. I feel like that’s understood. But people might try to pick other dudes or whatever the case may be.
“They try to use anything. I don’t even know what the criteria is anymore because at first it was about winning, and then you got guys that aren’t winning that are on the team. It’s confusing to the criteria, but I’ve always prided myself on defense. I do think I deserve to be All-Defensive team, first team. We got a top-four defense, so that is the level of DPOY. So yeah, the numbers don’t lie.”
Adebayo, who is the only player in franchise history to make one of the league’s All-Defensive teams in five different seasons while with the Heat, showed off his elite defensive skill set in Tuesday’s home win over the Nets. He totaled 23 points, nine rebounds and four assists while matching a career high with six steals and anchoring a Heat defense that limited the Nets to 98 points on 38.4 percent shooting from the field.
“He’s allowing us to play multiple schemes,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo, “to communicate in our system, to allow all the other guys to really have great defensive years like [Andrew Wiggins], [Davion Mitchell], on down the line, Pelle [Larsson].”
Adebayo once went to the media to try to campaign for himself to win the Defensive Player of the Year award. But now older and more experienced, Adebayo isn’t interested in doing that anymore.
“I care about winning games,” said Adebayo, who overtook Udonis Haslem to become the Heat’s all-time leader in defensive rebounds on Tuesday. “The accolades are going to follow at this point. I don’t self-campaign. It doesn’t feel great in my spirit. That’s like trying to tell somebody I’m a good person. I don’t like feeling like that. Other people need to be like, he’s a great person.
“From my peers and the people who play against me and understand that you’ve got to put me in the corner, so I don’t mess up your offensive schemes, that’s what matters more. When we get in these playoffs and they’re like, ‘No, don’t go to the screen with him. Put him in the strong side corner and just let him stay there. If we get a switch, swing it, swing it to somebody else.’ I don’t even know if you can count that as a stat. But that’s real in basketball, and a lot of people who are doing surveys wouldn’t know that. They just think because, ‘Oh, he’s a DPOY because he has five blocks a game.’”
Adebayo is more interested in winning his first NBA championship than winning his first Defensive Player of the Year award.
Miami seems far from a title at the moment, entering Wednesday in eighth place in the Eastern Conference and just fighting to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament. But Adebayo will continue pushing for his first championship after already falling short in two NBA Finals appearances during his career.
“Tim Duncan has 15 All-Defensive teams and never won DPOY,” Adebayo said. “I’m at five in year nine, about to get six. So it’s like if I get 10 All-Defensive teams, eight All-Stars, three or four All-NBAs, and then you throw in a championship. Oh, man. Listen, two middle fingers and I’m walking out the door. That’s a Hall of Fame career at that point.
“That’s how I manifest my career. If DPOY happens, it happens. But at this point it feels more like a political award than somebody actually doing their homework and trying to figure out who really is the DPOY.”
INJURY REPORT
The Heat ruled out three-point shooting forward Simone Fontecchio for Thursday’s matchup against the Nets because of a strained left groin. Fontecchio totaled 12 points on 3-of-6 shooting from three-point range in 20 minutes off the Heat’s bench in Tuesday’s victory over the Nets.
The Heat also will remain without Vlad Goldin (G League), Keshad Johnson (G League), Nikola Jovic (low back injury management), Trevor Keels (G League), Norman Powell (right groin strain) and Terry Rozier (not with team).
This story was originally published March 4, 2026 at 11:17 AM.
