Bam takes next step to stardom
There are plenty of reasons the Heat don’t look like the team that made the NBA Finals last season and might never get there. They treat rebounding like a part-time job. They’re a 3-point shooting team that ranks 26th in 3-point shooting.
They turn the ball over too much and the planned cavalry, Victor Oladipo, suffered the kind of untimely injury that suggests he won’t be riding over the horizon any time soon.
But if the Heat are to find their way again, if they are to be that team from the last playoffs, if they claw back to a respectable stand in the playoff hunt, the final few minutes in Sunday’s 109-107 win against Brooklyn will show the way.
Bam Adebayo will, really. He keeps taking the kind of progressive steps to stardom that great ones do. It wasn’t just the winning shot by him on Sunday, even if that’s the headliner — and even if he hadn’t done that in a while.
“High school,’’ Adebayo said. “When I had 50.”
The role was new for him, too. He got the ball 20 feet from the basket. Centers don’t grow up as creative, go-to guys.
“I’ve never been a dude who’s been a pure, natural scorer,’’ he said. “So being in those moments is a little different.”
He held his finger and thumb in inch a part to show how much different.
“It’s good to get that one out of the way,’’ he said.
He’s not a center anymore, not really, and hasn’t been for a while. The final minutes showed that again. Sunday’s change started
with the Heat down six when Adebayo cut it to four points with under four minutes to play with shot by the rim.
He already did something that shows another side of his development, something you’re accustomed to be now. Adebayo guarded the 6-2 Kyrie Irving on defense in the waning minutes.
It was star on star, the last big names in this odd game, as Jimmy Butler sat it out for the Heat and James Harden sat it out for Brooklyn and Kevin Durant left in the opening minutes.
Brooklyn didn’t score that possession. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra brought in Andre Iguodala to take on Irving. The Heat played the kind of defense they need in that final stretch, the kind they haven’t done enough of lately.
“When they came to double, I could definitely have made the last three shots,’’ Irving said. “I didn’t come up with it and they capitalized.”
That’s because Adebayo made all three of his shots in the final minutes. That final one covered some storylines. With under 10 seconds left, Adebayo had the ball 20 feet from the basket and turned to Spoelstra to see if he wanted a timeout. The Heat had two timeouts left. Spoelstra didn’t want a timeout.
Adebayo didn’t want to take one, either, because the Brooklyn defense was Jeff Green and no one else. All Sunday long, with no Butler, Brooklyn double-teamed Adebayo. He had a sloppy seven turnovers.
Now with the game on the line he drove Green toward the basket and then set him up for a medium-range, step-back jumper. Another storyline came into play here. Just Friday, Butler questioned Adebayo for over-using the medium-range jumper rather than play more physical.
“I like bully-ball,’’ Butler said. Adebayo had the perspective on Sunday to say Butler wasn’t calling out one player but the whole team. No matter, Adebayo needed that kind of developed shot Sunday.
“It was tough shot,’’ Green said. “You’ve got to give it to him for making it.”
Spoelstra remembered back to a similar situation in a training-camp scrimmage, perhaps the only time he’s worked with Adebayo on that shot. That one got botched by another player somehow. This one didn’t.
“What’s this, his fourth year?” guard Goran Dragic said. “You see the development into the player he is today. He’s in a great position. I still think he’s not done yet. He’s going to hit another level.”
He’s still a good personality, the kind that when asked who’s texted him after the game looks down at his phone. “Mommy,’’ he says.
Sunday’s final minutes showed a glimpse of who the Heat still can be in this uneasy season. They found themselves at the start of the playoffs last year. Maybe they repeat it this year.