Locker room divided? Bam won’t stand for it
Bam Adebayo is well aware of what a fractured locker room can look like.
He sat across from Hassan Whiteside when the former Miami Heat center would grouse about playing time or statistics. To his right in that locker room was Dion Waiters, who seemingly spent more than a year at odds with the team’s approach.
So in the wake of Jimmy Butler calling for more from the team following Friday’s hideous loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, Adebayo stressed that there is no us-vs.-them in the Heat locker room, only a collective purpose.
“Do me a favor too,” Adebayo said in the wake of his game-winning shot Sunday against the Brooklyn Nets at American-Airlines Arena, as the Heat turned their attention to Monday night’s visit by the Houston Rockets, “can you all switch that narrative, ‘Jimmy called out the team’?
“If you listen to the interview, he said, ‘we,’ so can you switch the narrative Jimmy says ‘the team,’ as in ‘we’, as in all of us, not just he’s saying it and it’s the team’s fault?”
In calling out the Heat’s play in Friday night’s loss at Target Center, Butler said ‘we’ five times,
in his postgame comment of, “We don’t deserve to win. Whenever we take these teams lightly, we don’t do what we’re supposed to do on the defensive end, we just look bad, as a whole, as a group, as a unit. It’s not good basketball.”
While Butler has had moments with coaches and teammates at previous stops, such division has not be the case with the Heat.
Adebayo said it is important that it doesn’t become the case.
“Because that’s how locker-room arguments start,” Adebayo said of such passion interpreted out of context. “You never know how people feel about it.
“So that’s all I’m saying. Switch the narrative to where it makes sense, and not chop off a little piece and make that the title. Like I get it’s your job, but that’s how locker-room arguments starts.
“Jimmy basically was saying we all weren’ t playing well, not just the other people, you know what I mean?”
Adebayo acknowledged that he appreciated Butler’s comment of, “I love when he’s shooting midrange jump shots, too, but he lets people off the hook. Play bully ball. I like bully ball.”
Adebayo said he took it as a lesson offered, a lesson accepted.
“I just got to find that balance when me and him are on the court together,” Adebayo said, with Butler sitting out Sunday’s victory with an ankle sprain. “Because you know me, I like to pass.
“I just be trying to get him involved so much that I forget about me and mine. So he’s been harping on me about that. So that’s the narrative.”
The power of one
So how unique was Dewayne Dedmon’s 10-point, 10-rebound double-double on Sunday against the Nets in his home debut?
In closing 1 of 1 from the field and 8 of 8 from the line against Brooklyn, Dedmon became the only player in NBA history (since minutes became a stat in 1951) to record at least 10 points, 10 rebounds and eight made free throws in under 16 minutes of action.
In addition, Dedmon, signed last week by the Heat, joined Willie Burton as the only players in the franchise’s 33 seasons to score at least 10 points on only one fieldgoal attempt. Burton did it on Jan. 10, 1993 against the Los Angeles Lakers, when he went 1 of 1 from the field and 8 of 10 from the line.
Triple the fun
With his 21 points, 15 rebounds and five assists in Sunday’s win, Adebayo recorded his third game of at least 20 points 15 rebounds and five assists, matching Billy Thompson for the most such games in franchise history.
Next on the Heat’s all-time list are Butler, Alonzo Mourning and Rony Seikaly, each with two such 20-15-5s.