Middle ground unearthed Bam’s breakout

Bam Adebayo recognized something had to change, that he needed something liberating, something to get his offensive potential closer to the bar he had so firmly established on the defensive end over his first five seasons.

So during the offseason, he headed upstairs from the Miami Heat locker room, to Erik Spoelstra’s office next to the practice court at Miami-Dade Arena.

“I had to talk to Spo,” Adebayo told the South Florida Sun Sentinel at his locker recently, before heading out as an Eastern Conference selection to Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game in Salt Lake City. “I told him, ‘I can’t can’t just run into 7-2 guys and expect to get a layup. I can’t do that all the time.’

“I was like, ‘Coach, I got to have a shot that I can go to.’ “

He has gone to it ever since, a feathery jumper from just inside the foul line that has become a fulcrum of the Heat’s offense, a shot demonized by the number crunchers as a low-percentage, low-yield two-point shot in a 3-point league.

A shot that has him at the All-Star break second in the league only to Giannis Antetokounmpo in points in the paint.

Lacking the length and height of an Antetokounmpo or other oversized NBA big men, Adebayo triangulated a place where his height and high release point could get him over the top against the 7-footers who had been daring him to meet at the rim.

“It got developed, because obviously I’m an undersized big, so that’s one of those shots I can always get to,” said Adebayo, listed by the Heat at 6 foot 9, 255 pounds. “And it just became my patented shot, at this point. When I get to the dots in transition or halfcourt, it doesn’t matter who’s back there. I’m getting to that.”

As in the dotted lines just below the foul line.

“I always had that shot,” Adebayo added, as he sat by his locker after a recent game, teammates having cleared out by that point. “It’s just I had to sacrifice it in college, because opponents were bigger than me. That’s not a shot they wanted.

“And in the NBA, I had to fit in where I could, because I couldn’t come in here just jacking up shots, because I wasn’t