On Saturday, Bam Adebayo took the first step towards superstardom for the Miami Heat. With an already short-handed roster and a unit struggling to keep pace without Jimmy Butler, Tyler Herro and Avery Bradley, Bam dropped 41 points on 14/20 shooting, while adding nine assists and five rebounds.
Facing a team with three superstars when your own are out would be a tall task for a 23-year-old, but this isn’t any 23-year-old. Bam was born for this. Pat Riley knew it too, saying No. 13 would hang in the rafters when all was said and done. The Heat have ultimate faith in Bam’s unlimited potential– they wouldn’t have signed him to a five-year, $163 million max contract extension if they didn’t.
Aggressive Bam
One knock on Bam’s game is that he isn’t very aggressive on offense. These doubts were silenced early. It started with a nice drive to the left block, with an up-and-under fake for an and-one at the 4:49 mark in the 1st on the smaller Jeff Green. Bam then hit Green with a double-pump midrange pull-up with 4:03 to go.
Adebayo went at the smaller Green all night with one-dribble pull-ups or all-out drives to the rim. This is extremely encouraging for him to recognize his dominance over smaller defenders. If Bam realizes that his athletic 6’9 frame is unstoppable for undersized bigs, the league is in trouble. Even larger bigs like DeAndre Jordan can’t stay in front of Bam’s lateral quickness.
We even saw some sets of the ex-Kentucky Wildcat bringing the ball up to set the offense. His range of abilities create nightmares for defenses, and he’s just touching the surface in all of his abilities. The offense runs through Bam, but when he is aggressive, the offense is efficient and scary.
[pickup_prop id=”2668″]
The Ultimate Pick and Roller
Bam had it going with Goran Dragic all night long. His first points of the game came off a pick-and-roll find from Dragic off a nice up fake. With 1:41 left in the half, Dragic hit Bam on an alley-oop and hit him again on the very next possession. Adebayo’s frame along with his long arms and leaping ability make him the perfect roller for a good point guard. Much of Miami’s offense runs through Bam at the elbow or through creating for him off a screen. This style provides Bam easy buckets along with creating for others when teams sag off Adebayo, allowing Goran to hit the easy mid-range shot or floater.
Bam gains position off the roll extremely well. He sets a hard screen, then cuts to beat the slower big off the roll. It helps to have great guards like Goran setting him up too.
Improving His Shot
His sixth-career three-point field goal — first of the season — came at the end of the half. Adebayo has been talking about expanding his range to shooting threes, so it is great to see him start that process.
https://twitter.com/MiamiHEAT/status/1353165203513479168
The best move of the night, though, came to end the third. Bam brought the ball up with five seconds to go, sized the aforementioned Green up with a between-the-legs hesitation and nailed a near-three pointer. Flashes of a Kevin Durant-style move show that Bam is just starting to get comfortable with his long-range shot. Adding these moves create a whole new arsenal to his game.
As his range grows, so has his status at the stripe. He shot 12/14 from the line on Saturday and is on pace for a career year at 86%– nearly a 14% improvement since entering the league.
The biggest new addition to his game this year has been his mid-range shot. He is shooting 59% on 10-16 footers this season and 47.8 percent on 16+ footers this year. This is all done with the lowest percentage of field goals assisted in his career, highlighting his ability to create on his own. When Bam is consistently hitting mid-range jumpers, he’s simply unguardable.
This was on clear display in Saturday’s 4th quarter. A collection of jabs, rip moves and shot fakes made for a near-impossible guard. Whether it’s a jab and left-step jumper (10:41 in the fourth) or a rip-through jab move (8:11 left in the fourth), Bam’s bag is ever-expanding.
Joining Elite Company
When you’re in the same category as Dwyane Wade, you’ve got a good thing going. This was done Saturday night, as Bam became the second player in Heat history to score 40+ points at age 23 or younger. It was also the second-most Heat points scored by a player since 2014, in which he fell one point short of Wade. Bam also joined Wade, LeBron James and Jimmy Butler as the only Heat players with 40-point games on 70% shooting in the last 20 years. It’s fair to say Bam is cementing his legacy as a Heat great in only his 4th season.
No Ceiling In Sight
Bam came into the league as the No. 14 pick. He was featured primarily as a rim-protector, rebounder and lob catcher in his time at Kentucky. College teammates De’Aaron Fox (5th) and Malik Monk (11th) were selected ahead of him. As with most UK products, the range of Bam’s talents weren’t heavily featured in Coach Cal’s offense. He is just beginning to show his full arsenal of abilities.
Adebayo has proven to be one of the top passing big men in the league, averaging north of five assists per game in each of his last two seasons. He has also shown the ability to create for himself, particularly creating from the elbow and working into the midrange game.
We already knew his defense was elite, just ask Jayson Tatum. He can defend all five positions, and he’s finally becoming an aggressive scorer from multiple levels.
Bam Adebayo has been on a tear with a depleted Heat roster, averaging 20.3 points (career and team-high), 8.9 rebounds (team-high), 5.5 assists (team-high), a block per game (team-high) and a team-high 24.35 PER. He’s already an All-Star, but is now on the verge of becoming an undoubted superstar.
Follow us on Twitter @HeatLead for the latest Heat news and insight.
Leave a comment