Is Bam Adebayo for real?
The Miami Heat have their highest expectations since the Big Three era, and their captain is having his slowest start in two years, which is a big deal since people care about the team now, and Giannis Antetokounmpo can opt out of his contract in the summer. It’s been ages since the East has been this strong, so starting the season in a crater is already cause for the alarm bells.
Adebayo said he knows he’s playing poorly, but thinks he’s being targeted as a scapegoat. That’s hysterical because he’s been outplayed by Paul Reed, John Collins and P.J. Washington when he’s supposed to be some renowned $50 million player; he can’t be blamed for all of it since Tim Hardaway Jr. and Klay Thompson are playing like scrubs, but a good chunk of the 0-4 record is on him.
Davion Mitchell said at Monday’s post-game press conference that Adebayo needs to be more aggressive and avoid the spots Antetokounmpo is working in. He was spot on, but imagine how frustrated even Adebayo’s teammates have to be for someone to come out as directly as Mitchell did.
ESPN analyst, Jorge Sedano, recently said on Five on the Floor that Adebayo is a top 20 player or even higher. I want a piece of his prescription because there’s no way someone who loses confidence offensively, like Draymond Green, is a great player. He’s always been very good, but I’ve never understood why his reputation is unassailable locally or the need to anoint him when it has not been earned.
Adebayo missed all five 3-point attempts against the Dallas Mavericks on Monday, and he let that neuter his aggression, while Dwyane Wade was sitting court side.
Wade had said on his podcast before the game that Adebayo and Antetokounmpo needed to have a similar conversation that Wade and LeBron James had after the 2011 Finals meltdown, in which they got on the same page. Wade was surgical with his analysis and it’s incumbent on coach Erik Spoelstra and the committee to get the best players to understand that.
Adebayo must have hit Tyler Herro in the summer because deep down he fears the criticism he got could be the truth, and somewhere, Jimmy Butler must have thought to himself, “See what I had to deal with?” Stan Van Gundy wasn’t wrong when he said Adebayo was offensively overrated because he doesn’t have a go-to move nor is he a sharp enough as a marksman from the middle.
He’s averaging 11.8 points on 40 percent shooting, which is horrific for a big man. Those numbers will improve, but the Heat needed him to be a threat yesterday, and they can’t take the next step into contention while he weighs them down.
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