‘No Ceiling’: Adebayo plans to shoot more next year
Fresh off a European vacation, Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo was in Las Vegas to catch some summer league basketball Wednesday night.
And he delivered a message that will be well received by some Heat fans: He plans to look more for his shot.
Adebayo sat courtside at Cox Pavilion alongside Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and teammate Caleb Martin as they watched Miami’s summer league squad take on the Philadelphia 76ers on UNLV’s campus. The Heat, which continues its Las Vegas Summer League schedule on Friday against the Toronto Raptors (10 p.m., NBA TV), fell to the 76ers 75-71 on Wednesday.
Toward the end of the game, Adebayo appeared on 790 The Ticket’s ongoing broadcasts of summer league action and spoke about a wide range of topics that included his trip to London, the Heat’s offseason moves and his new offensive approach.
“They call me ‘No Ceiling’ for a reason,” said Adebayo, who turns 25 on Monday.
“Just being a more efficient scorer. I feel like my shot attempts are going to go up. The guys want the ball in my hands. They want me to score more. My job is really easy this summer.”
That’s in line with Heat president Pat Riley’s comments from earlier this offseason, when he spoke about Adebayo and said “there’s another level at his age now that we need more consistency in his ability to get good shots, create good shots for himself and us and score.”
Adebayo was again a defensive force this past season, finishing fourth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting and earning a spot on the NBA’s All-Defensive Second Team for the third consecutive year.
He also averaged career-highs in points (19.1 per game) and shot attempts (13 per game) to go with 10.1 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.4 steals per game in his third full season as the Heat’s starting center.
Despite those impressive numbers, Adebayo still has plenty of room to expand his offensive game.
While shooting 73.2 percent from inside the restricted area, he shot 42.2 percent on all other two-pointers (126 of 279 or 45.2 percent on nonrim paint shots and 42 of 119 or 35.3 percent on midrange attempts) and 0 of 6 on threes this regular season for an effective field-goal percentage (measures field-goal percentage adjusting for made threes being more valuable than made twos) of 55.9 percent that ranked in the NBA’s 46th percentile among bigs, according to Cleaning the Glass.
Adebayo also generated 0.98 points per possession (63rd percentile in the NBA) in post-up situations this regular season.
Riley wants Adebayo to find more consistency in creating his own scoring opportunities.
Just in the Eastern Conference finals, Adebayo’s aggressiveness in that department fluctuated with four shots attempts in Game 1, six shot attempts in Game 2, 22 shot attempts in Game 3, five shot attempts in Game 4, 15 shot attempts in Game 5, six shot attempts in Game 6 and 21 shot attempts in Game 7.
“This could be a year, and [Spoelstra] and I will sit down and talk about how can Bam be developed in a way to improve his consistent shot ability every night,” Riley said, “Getting 15 shots every night and quality shots
that he can get, that he can create. Whether it’s in the post, whether it’s at the elbow or whatever.”
Adebayo is drawing motivation from the way the Heat’s season ended. Miami finished one win short of reaching the NBA Finals, as it dropped Game 7 of the East finals to the Boston Celtics 100-96.
With the Heat trailing by two points, Heat star Jimmy Butler missed an open three-pointer with 16.6 seconds left that would have given Miami the lead in the final seconds of what turned into a season-ending loss.
“It’s mandatory to get
back to where we were and have a different result,” Adebayo said. “It haunts you. Because you get that close to something, one shot away and you look at the game, there were so many moments where we could have taken advantage of the game.”
As it stands right now, it appears that most of last season’s Heat roster will be back to avenge that season-ending defeat.
So far in free agency, the Heat has re-signed three of its players (center Dewayne Dedmon, guard Victor Oladipo and Martin) and has yet to make any outside additions. The only player on the Heat’s current 15-man roster, which includes 13 signed to contracts, who wasn’t on the team last season is first-round pick Nikola Jovic.
“It’s good to feel like we can run it back and do something different this year having Caleb, Dewayne, Victor [all back], guys who know our system, and everyone just falling in line,” Adebayo said.
But change is still possible. The Heat remains linked to trade talks for Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Durant and Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell, although The Athletic reported Wednesday night that “the Jazz and Knicks have begun discussions on a potential trade to send three-time NBA All-Star Donovan Mitchell to New York.”
Whatever happens, Adebayo doesn’t want to fall just short of a championship again next season.
“It puts that battery in your back to do something special,” he said. “You get to the conference finals, get to the Finals, that exciting environment where you get that moment of you’re really here.”
Of his vacation to England, which included a trip to Wimbledon, Adebayo told Heat broadcasters Jason Jackson and Eric Reid: “I think the best part about the trip was the food. I went to one of the best restaurants in the country and I had authentic ravioli. I’m not a fan of fish and chips.”