Miami Heat: Why you have to give Coach Pop a pass on Bam snub

The Miami Heat did what they do Wednesday on the San Antonio Spurs and the coach that snubbed Bam. Here’s why you have to give Coach Pop a pass though.

The Miami Heat came into Wednesday night’s game on a mission. Not only would they be out to maintain their nearly flawless home record, get a win after dropping their first set of consecutive games all season, but they were also all supporting Bam Adebayo more than likely, as he probably wanted to get a win and have a great showing against Coach Gregg Popovich and his San Antonio Spurs.

While we’ll never understand how, but in case you missed it, Coach Pop was the driving force behind Bam Adebayo being dismissed from the U.S. National Team over this past summer. If you look at the guys that they took ahead of him, then it really makes you start to wonder what was going on in that camp and especially after comparing their season’s thus far with what Bam is doing.

It is with additional intel on the scenario though that this statement must be made: Coach Pop deserves a pass on that incident. Here is why in the form of a quote from Pop via David Wilson of the Miami Herald.

"From what I see, he’s a different player now than he was when we had all the tryouts. I think that in general when I said he wasn’t quite ready, I think he didn’t show what he could really do,” Popovich said ahead of the Spurs game against the Heat at AmericanAirlines Arena. “I think that was just maybe a product of the guys that he was around. He was in a different environment. He probably deferred more than he needed to, he probably was a little unsure of himself — that kind of thing. And in that sense if that same tryout was today, I think he’d look a lot differently at it, when you talk about being aggressive and doing things that you would normally do, but I just think he probably deferred and was maybe too polite, just maybe not ready for the occasion at that particular time.Now that you’re seeing during the season, I’ve shaken my head several times saying, That’s not the guy that we saw during the tryout. Maybe that was my fault. Maybe I should’ve done it differently so his skills could come out. That’s the best I can offer you — the truth."

If you read the statement from Coach Popovich, it all becomes clear. He saw something in Bam over the summer that we all see, have seen, and beg for him to not be. Plain and simple, Bam was too passive.

Bam Adebayo can do anything on the basketball court and he knows that. While sometimes I think that he finds himself in scenarios where he has so many options, that he takes the safe one in order to protect himself. As the old saying goes though, in order to get something you’ve never had before, you may have to do some things that you’ve never done before.

This is Bam Adebayo in a nutshell. In order to take his game to that next level, he must start to become more selfish and aggressive. We scream for it all the time as Miami Heat fans when Bam has an open shot or open lane to the rim, he just needs to shoot it or drive it, as opposed to looking for the open shooter or cutter.

Bam excels at making the right basketball play, but sometimes he has to make the right play for Bam! So, to go back to Popovich’s actions over the summer with Bam, he was wrong in his decision as there probably weren’t too many players there better than Bam, nonetheless other big men. However, if the above was his truthful reasoning, we can’t be that mad because we as fans tend to say the same things about Bam all the time.