Adebayo breaks silence on Ball incident and Heat’s future: ‘I want to win’
Miami Heat captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo declined to speak to the media after Tuesday’s season-ending play-in tournament loss to the Charlotte Hornets, but he made his voice heard on exit interview day.
Just a few days after his season ended a few quarters early when Hornets guard LaMelo Ball tripped him near the baseline early in the second quarter of Tuesday’s defeat in Charlotte, North Carolina, Adebayo spoke about the incident and the Heat’s important offseason ahead during exit interview day at Kaseya Center on Thursday afternoon.
First, Adebayo made clear he’s OK despite needing to leave Tuesday’s game early due to a lower back injury stemming from Ball’s trip.
“Obviously, I’m still walking, so I’m OK,” Adebayo said after walking gingerly, but without any assistance, to the microphone on Thursday.
Adebayo exited Tuesday’s win-or-go-home play-in tournament contest with 10:58 left in the second quarter and never returned after hurting his lower back on a hard fall. A replay showed Ball, while on his back on the court, yanking Adebayo’s ankle and tripping him while Adebayo was trying to save a loose ball from going out of bounds.
An X-ray of Adebayo’s lower back injury conducted at Spectrum Center on Tuesday returned negative, the Heat said. An MRI has not yet been deemed necessary for Adebayo’s injury.
The officials couldn’t review the play during Tuesday’s game because it was a live-ball situation, and they didn’t whistle the play dead when Adebayo fell. It’s a rule that Adebayo believes needs to change to allow a review in such a situation, much like a three-pointer can be ruled a two-pointer or vice versa a few possessions later based on video replay.
“I think the officials handled it, I guess, by the rule book,” Adebayo said of officials not reviewing the play during Tuesday’s contest. “I feel like it’ll be a change at some point because it doesn’t make sense that three or four plays can go by, and you can review a three-point shot. But you can’t review a hostile act.”
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Upon further review of the incident, the NBA announced Wednesday night that Ball was fined $35,000 and assessed a Flagrant Foul 2 for his trip of Adebayo. If the play had been called a Flagrant Foul 2 during Tuesday’s game, Ball would have been immediately ejected from the contest.
Ball was also fined an additional $25,000 for using profane language during a live postgame television interview on Tuesday.
“I think LaMelo is just going to see it as another game,” Adebayo said. “He makes, what, $30 million a year? $60,000, he’s not even going to see. But it’s one of those things, everybody is going to have their opinion on it. Nobody is really going to know the truth, but LaMelo, if it was dirty or not. Obviously, everybody is going to try to defend him, or defend me.”
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was critical of the officials and Ball’s trip of Adebayo immediately after Tuesday’s season-ending loss, saying “he should have been thrown out of the game for that.” But Spoelstra was calmer when asked about the topic during Thursday’s exit interviews.
“I’m not really thinking about that anymore,” Spoelstra said Thursday. “I said what I had to say about it. I didn’t think that he needed to be penalized more moving forward. I don’t think that would make sense. I don’t think he’s a dirty player. I just think, at the moment, both things can be true. In that moment, it was a dirty play, a dangerous play. It should have been caught at that moment, but it wasn’t. And then, you move on."
Ball said after Tuesday’s game that he was going to seek out Adebayo to apologize to him, but Adebayo said Thursday that conversation never happened.
“By that time, I was in the shower trying to figure out what I was going to do next,” Adebayo said. “Obviously, everything happened all at once, and I wanted to be out there. So, at some point, I’ll see him again, we’ll have that conversation, and we’ll move on.”
Even after a video surfaced this week showing Ball grabbing at Adebayo’s leg during a January 2024 game while the Heat center was running to the other end of the court, Adebayo said he doesn’t know of any bad blood between him and Ball. Adebayo stumbled but did not fall when Ball grabbed his leg two years ago.
“I’ve always had great conversations with him,” Adebayo said. “There’s never been any bad blood between us. Obviously, I was drafted in the same draft class as his brother [Lonzo Ball]. So, it’s always been good conversations. As far as those incidents, like I said, I can’t tell you what goes through his mind.”
While Adebayo never returned to Tuesday’s game after hurting his lower back, he said he would have found a way to play in the playoffs if the Heat managed to survive the play-in tournament.
“I do not like needles,” Adebayo said. “And everybody on the training staff knows that. But I would have taken a couple. Already did. But yeah, I would have taken a couple more to keep playing, for sure.”
But the Heat did not make the playoffs this season. It’s the first time Miami has missed the playoffs since 2019.
The Heat hasn’t advanced past the first round of the playoffs since making it to the NBA Finals in 2023.
Does Adebayo, as the team’s highest-paid player and captain, believe the Heat needs to make roster changes this summer?
“That is not a question for me. That is a question for Spo and Pat Riley,” Adebayo said. “Obviously, the organization evaluates if we need to make changes or not. Seeing as we missed the playoffs, probably there will be changes. So, my thing is for me to be prepared to have that conversation if there are changes.”
There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Heat’s roster this offseason, but there’s not much uncertainty surrounding Adebayo’s situation. Adebayo signed a maximum extension during the 2024 offseason that keeps him under contract with the Heat through the 2028-29 season.
But Adebayo has voiced his frustration in recent weeks over the Heat’s four-year run in the play-in tournament. After playing in two NBA Finals during his first six seasons in the league, Adebayo wants more for himself and the Heat than the middling stretch the organization has been stuck in for the last three years.
“You see how the last four years have been,” Adebayo said. “You can go in and voice that. Everybody in this building knows I want to win. I put on that jersey almost every game through hell and high water just because I want to win. I want to put us in a position to win. When you don’t win, I always put it on myself. That’s me going in the summer trying to be better. Trying to figure out how I can take my game to the next level, how I can be a better captain.
“And the business side is not my side. To me, being able to share my opinion is more important because that means you have somebody actively listening to you. For them to listen is me telling them I want to win. That’s bottom line.”
