Bam Adebayo is the Miami Heat’s future at center
The 2017 NBA rookie class had a nearly historic season. While it didn’t come into the league with quite the flair of LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony in 2003, or the strong class of 2015, 2017 produced one of the deepest All-Rookie teams assembled in years. The first team — led by Donovan Mitchell, Jayson Tatum, and Ben Simmons — featured players that put up near All-Star numbers in either the regular season or playoffs.
The second team featured exciting but imperfect young point guards in Lonzo Ball and Dennis Smith, supplemented by two players who may have been top-two players on their teams by year’s end in Bogdan Bogdanovic and Josh Jackson. Pick any combination of two first team and three second team members, and you’d have a pretty reasonable first team in most drafts.
Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat was the highest vote-getter to not make an All-Rookie team. That seems surprising, because players like De’Aaron Fox and OG Anunoby were probably more impressive throughout the year. Adebayo was a rotation player for Miami, sure, but he didn’t have a signature place in the team’s core like Fox did, and didn’t pop as frequently as Anunoby did. He averaged 6.9 points and 5.5 rebounds in 19.8 minutes per game, which is good, but nothing spectacular. His presence at the top of the list of “also receiving votes,” just one vote off of Josh Jackson’s spot on the team, seems surprising on its surface.
Adebayo received votes because he passed both criteria that commonly get players onto the All-Rookie team — he made a strong impact on his team as a rookie, and he flashed plenty of future development potential. While he wasn’t on the level of Tatum or Mitchell in either regard, he fit well within the role Miami asked him to play, and showed skills that hint at a ceiling as a very effective starting two-way center for the Heat once the Hassan Whiteside experience ends.
Adebayo finds many ways to be effective without having either of the two traditional routes to being a high-level center in the modern NBA. He can’t shoot 3s, and he’s not a special rim protector, lacking the vertical presence and quick reactions to consistently affect shots at the rim. Instead, Adebayo fits the mold of a classic “energy” big — a player who is best at finishing plays on offense, crashing the glass, and defending capably on the perimeter.
His best offensive trait is his hands, which should allow him to develop into a very strong roll man in the future. Adebayo has a great nose for the ball, and he’s able to catch the ball at angles that are far from perfect.
He creates a high margin for error for his guards, increasing the functional catch radius of a 7-foot-1 wingspan with soft hands that can gather and finish from suboptimal angles.
This allows Adebayo to get plenty of chances at the rim — just under 70 percent of his shots came here, per NBA Miner shot chart data. As a rookie, he didn’t convert very well here, shooting 62.1 percent, suboptimal for a big man tasked with being a finisher. This limited him to playing more of the “dunker” role. But if this area can improve as he gets stronger, he should be able to become a good roll man. He’s looked better here in Summer League, using his shoulders and ball fakes to carve out space to get good looks up under the basket.
It helps that he has good touch on floaters and hook shots, as well. While these are inherently lower-percentages shots, they’re important for undersized big men like Adebayo to have as bigger players wall off the paint.
If you’re going to be an effective big in today’s NBA and you’re a non-shooter, you have to find a way to get yourself open, and finish those opportunities you create for yourself. You can make an NBA career out of finishing easy plays. Amar’e Stoudemire is the best example of this, but guys like Ed Davis, Tristan Thompson, and Montrezl Harrell have made careers partly because of their ability to just finish the high-percentage plays that are presented to you. Adebayo has step one down — he’s great at working himself into open spots and creating those easy baskets. The Heat’s hope is that he progresses in step two this year and converts at a higher level.
Adebayo also has to compensate for his lack of rim protection instincts on the defensive end. This was a big knock on him coming into the draft last year — he really struggled to impact the game at Kentucky, because he struggled to rotate to help and create situations where he could use his leaping ability to contest shots. He did progress here this year, but more importantly, he had a strong start in another avenue that can make him a strong defender. One of Adebayo’s best games as a rookie came on Dec. 3 — when the Heat continually saw Adebayo switched on to Steph Curry and Kevin Durant against the Warriors, and he faired incredibly well in a close loss.
Adebayo isn’t the most consistent team defender, but he had decent impact — he finished the year at plus-1.7 in Defensive Real Plus-Minus, second among rookie centers behind Jordan Bell, and the Heat defense was 2.8 points per100 possessions better with Adebayo on the floor. He showed some advanced technique in individual defense throughout the year, which is very exciting.
Adebayo’s perimeter defense hinges on his flexibility, which allows him to contain at a pretty high level already. Few centers can flip their hips as well as Bam, and he contains guards pretty well in transition:
And in Miami’s pick-and-roll coverage:
It’s obvious that the Heat development staff have clicked with Adebayo here, making full use of his lateral agility to contain at the point of attack. He sits down in a strong stance, slides his feet, rarely over-commits, and uses that flexibility to keep track of a ball handler changing direction. He even can read and react at a promising level, cutting off the ball-handler with the help of pressure from the guard coming around the screen, and then quickly recovering to the big rolling to the rim:
It’s going to be exciting to see how Adebayo progresses in his second season. He has the skill set to be a decent dive man offensively, and as he becomes more disciplined, he should continue on the path to being a strong defender, and one that is very useful come playoff time when the need to switch actions intensifies.
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More importantly, Adebayo provides a nice counter to Whiteside, who is on the hook for $51 million for the next two years. If nothing else, Adebayo should develop into a safe option at the 5 for Miami, especially if he can become more consistent. He’s not going to do anything to confound an opponent’s scheme, but he should be able to give you safe production, which is a good counter to the bombastic Whiteside, who confounds the Heat’s plans as often as he does the opponent’s. He’s the safety valve, and should make Whiteside expendable as we move into the less palatable years of his contract. Bam Adebayo may never live up to the lofty standard set by his peers in the 2017 class, but he’s well on his way to being a very strong rotation player in Miami.