Miami Heat: Where Bam Adebayo stands in Heat plans for 2021

Now that the Miami Heat have picked up Bam Adebayo’s option, we must look to the future and evaluate how he fits into their big plans in the summer of 2021.

Earlier this week the Miami Heat picked up Bam Adebayo‘s fourth-year option, locking him in not just for the 2019-20 season but the 2020-21 season as well. While the Heat had until the end of October to pick up this option, they wasted no time in getting this deal done.

Adebayo’s salary next season is $3.45 million, and in 2020-21 he will make $5.1 million. This makes him almost certainly the best value contract on the roster assuming he maintains last season’s high level of production.

He took Hassan Whiteside‘s starting center job away last season after the All-Star break and never relinquishing it, and even making Whiteside expendable in a trade that helped consummate the sign-and-trade which brought Jimmy Butler to Miami.

While Adebayo’s immediate value as a defender and rebounder is evident, it’s the longer-term view which is most interesting. He will enter restricted free agency (RFA) in the summer of 2021, which happens to be the summer which the majority of the Heat’s big and bloated contracts come off the books. It also happens to be the summer in which just about every superstar in the NBA becomes a free agent.

As things stand right now, the Heat only have Butler, Justise Winslow (on a team option worth $13 million), Tyler Herro and KZ Okpala under contract, along with Adebayo’s RFA rights. Including Winslow’s $13 million, the Heat only have $54 million in guaranteed contracts on the books.

This is a great situation for one of the NBA’s great free agent destinations, but Adebayo’s situation could give an advantage to rival teams in pursuit of the same superstars the Heat are after. The nature of restricted free agency is such that the Heat can match any offer made by another team and Adebayo will be bound to stay in Miami, but rivals could offer a massive contract in order to put the Heat in a real bind.

Do they match an RFA suitor’s offer sheet and potentially take themselves out of the running for one or more superstars, or do they take their chances and set aside everything in their pursuit of the biggest names in the NBA and risk losing Bam Adebayo for nothing?

Picking up his option was a no-brainer for the Miami Heat, but the drama is just beginning as the organization prepares to build its way back to the top of the league.