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Saturday 14 December 2019 12:07, UK
Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo has rounded out his offensive game and is playing like an All-Star. In two months' time, he deserves to become one, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.
For the Miami Heat, years of floating in or around tough, first-round-exit territory and struggling to acquire genuine star talent due to the prolific trading of draft picks and a lot of salary cap expenditure finally ended this past summer.
The trade for Jimmy Butler from the Philadelphia 76ers added a true two-way star of the game, and while it cost them a noted quality role player in Josh Richardson, the resultant infusion of talent was sorely needed.
The somewhat prickly Butler seems to have found a good spot for himself, an organisation whose high standards and work ethic match his own, with young players generally committed to defense that he can work with, who know their place in the offensive hierarchy and where his position as the primary star is uncontested. So far, so good, and if there was any doubt, the hot start for the Heat justifies the decision.
That said, even the most alpha of alpha dogs need some help. Earlier in the season, we explored how a trio of Miami Heat players could all potentially ascend to becoming the second star alongside Butler.
Included in that trio was Bam Adebayo, the third-year center whose tantalising quality was a substantial reason why Hassan Whiteside - once so important and revered as the most successful of all the Heat's reclamation projects - had become so surplus to requirements.
Inasmuch as Adebayo has been an excellent player thus far this season, the article had a point. It was however written with an offensive leaning. As it has transpired so far, Adebayo's defense has been just as big of a reason behind both his and his team's improvements, if not bigger.
No NBA position has evolved more in the last few years down the center spot. The long-standing belief that the tallest player on a basketball team - which the center almost always is - should play closest to the basket on both ends of the court is no longer as incontrovertible as it once was.
All bigs are empowered to shoot from away from the basket now if they can, roll to the rim hard, and be able to defend their opponents who do the same. The inefficiencies inherent within the post-up offensive style for all but the very best at it are much more greatly understood; shooting, spacing and attacking said space are therefore now much more highly valued. And it follows from there are that more mobile bigs are more highly valued as result.
Even before he had played a single NBA game, Adebayo ticked most of these boxes. With long arms that allow him to cover space well, Adebayo is also a good athlete, in terms of both his run-and-jump ability and his lateral agility. He runs the court well, has good hands, leaps quickly and often, and has always wanted to play defense. With his ability to cover ground, he can defend multiple areas of the court, the most en vogue skill of all right now, even more so than shooting.
Indeed, shooting has been the one thing that Adebayo has not hitherto done much of. Over the course of his first two years in the league, Adebayo shot only 3-of-22 from three-point range and 13-of-53 from outside of 16 feet, reticent to look to shoot and inefficient when he would do so.
That will likely soon change, though. The news out of Miami this week is that Butler has essentially decided to fine Adebayo for every game in which he does not take a three, meaning many more will be forthcoming. And if/when they do, we will be hard-pushed to find something Adebayo cannot do.
On the season to date, Adebayo is all over the stat sheet. He is averaging 15.3 points, 10.5 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.4 steals and 1.2 blocks offensively, and while his turnover rate is high at 3.0 per game, his much-increased usage rate (up to 19.5 per cent from 15.8 per cent) and far greater role in the passing game of the half-court offense is a big part of why.
In each of his three seasons to date, Adebayo has improved his scoring per 36 minutes, his rebounding percentage, his assist percentage, his true shooting percentage, his steals and blocks percentage, and all the advanced metrics calculated off the back of them. He scores more efficiently, he scores more variedly, he wins more positions and he contests at the basket better than ever.
Despite all the projectable tools as a modern-era defensive five as outlined above, Adebayo's rim protection was less impressive at Kentucky, and an area of the game in which he needed to prove himself at the NBA level.
Turns out, we needn't have worried. Adebayo has been playing like an All-Star. And in two months' time, he will probably become one.
Meyers Leonard, the other acquisition in the Butler trade, has started every game alongside Adebayo in the frontcourt this season. Leonard is basically the complete opposite of Bam as a player; bigger but slower, far less able to cover ground defensively, somewhat soft, but also an extremely talented shooter with a soft touch from all areas.
Leonard knows first-hand the impact and versatility of the man so often covering for him. He told CBS Sports: "Bam, on the defensive end, name something he can't do. He can stay in front of a guard. He can chase somebody like Joe Harris off a screen and get a good contest. He can guard in the post. He rebounds. I mean, he does it all. And he loves to win, he's a great team-mate and at the end of the day, we can really, really count on him to get a stop. Anywhere on the floor."
Veteran Kelly Olynyk backs up Adebayo and he knows the quality of the player he is covering for, telling Sports Illustrated: "Bam has been doing a great job defensively. He guards one through five, does whatever you ask of him. Off-ball, on-ball, pick-and-rolls, everything."
These things were largely true of Adebayo's play over the past two seasons as well, albeit to slightly lesser degrees. Yet it is the offensive growth that has rounded out Adebayo as a player. The Heat much more frequently use Adebayo as a passing threat both facing the basket and when backing it down, and with the addition of Butler at point guard to open up an offensive unit that ran seriously short of creation and spacing last year, head coach Eric Spoelstra is now able to get the ball to him much more often, too, a task that Adebayo seems to be embracing.
"Offensively, we're running the offense through [Adebayo] more and more," Spoelstra told Sports Illustrated. "We started that process last year, but the last three months of the season, he has really improved his playmaking and his passing. It seems like every month I can give him something more on his plate and he's been able to take on all of that."
The departed Whiteside put up the same sort of raw numbers as Adebayo, aside from the assists. On the most cursory of looks, then, the upgrade does not look too significant.
But it is how the two do it that has made the difference. Whiteside loathes screening, does not roll with purpose, catches only to try and score, forces the action rather than plays within the flow, overly pursues blocks rather than playing sound positional defense and does not step up.
Adebayo, by contrast, works hard to always get into the right spots and disrupt the play without going for the highlight. The Heat benched and then traded Whiteside because they sought addition by subtraction, and that was made possible only by the ascent of Bam.
If Adebayo does not make the All-Star game for the first time in his career this season, it will only be due to circumstances.
Perhaps he will lose out to Domantas Sabonis, an equally worthy young breakout player further ahead in the reputation stakes. Perhaps the relative infancy of his Heat team's competitiveness will still count against him. Perhaps some will still be fooled by the similarity of his basic counting statistics to Whiteside.
If for whatever reason Adebayo is not a 2020 NBA All-Star, though, remember that his play alone deserved a spot.
