Miami Heat All-Star big, Bam Adebayo, was already one of the best players in the league entering the bubble. Now, he’s even taken a step forward in the playoffs.
The Miami Heat are navigating the Eastern Conference and NBA playoffs as well as any of us could have expected. Heading into their current series, the Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics, none of us thought that they would enter it 8-1 and especially not after being able to just plow through both Indiana and Milwaukee.
Well, they did it.
The Miami Heat not only validated everything they did in the regular season, proved that Jimmy Butler was a homerun of a move, but also proved they are headed in the right direction beyond even this championship run. They aren’t done yet though as they haven’t accomplished anything, what they can be certain of based on how far they have come though is this, they have the right pieces in place to make great things happen.
While the aforementioned Jimmy Butler is one of those pieces, the absolute key piece even, he isn’t the only key piece for the Miami Heat. One of their other key pieces and their second All-Star is Bam Adebayo.
What has traditionally made Bam the elite player that he is and an All-Star performer is his passive dominance. What this hints towards is his ability to impact the game in every aspect of it, but in a less ball-dominant fashion, as opposed to just the traditional scoring star who is the main handler and finisher all the time.
The Miami Heat need all that they can get from their players to advance to the NBA Finals. It’s a good thing Bam Adebayo choose now to take another step then.
Well, the NBA bubble and playoffs situation has seen Bam Adebayo take things up another notch. Bam has always been capable of anything on the floor that he wanted to do, it was just a case of whether he decided to be aggressive and do it or not.
More often than not in the bubble and especially in the postseason, Bam has been aggressive and attacking. Furthermore, he has also taken more midrange jumpers than he has taken in all of the regular season games combined, the pre-bubble regular season and the seeding games of the bubble.
Not only is he taking those spot-up mid-range jumpers from the free-throw line area when he gets the space, as the defenders tend to back away from him, but he is also finding other ways to add the jump shot to his game.
Check out this play from Game 2 of their Eastern Conference Finals series against Boston, from the Twitter account of the NBA’s Joseph Beguiristain.
Such a tough shot by Bam pic.twitter.com/bVsD7LT0ox
— Joseph Beguiristain (@JoeBeguiristain) September 18, 2020
Even in a Game 3 defeat, Bam reset his own personal playoff scoring bar. He put up a playoff career-high 27 points to go along with 16 rebounds, one assist, three steals, and two blocked shots.
Though the Miami Heat were not able to take that victory and go up 3-0 in the series, it was a good sign to see Bam continue to blossom. His blooming can only mean good things for the remainder of this series, the remainder of a run to the title, and the remainder of his career.
We hope he continues to shine in Wednesday night’s Game 4 matchup, as they will need all of the Adebayo antics they can get to get a victory. With these facts in mind though, this is why it is true when I declare that Bam Adebayo Has taken a step forward in the playoffs.