Heat’s Bam Adebayo gets brutally honest on ‘lessons learned’ from ugly playoff series vs. Celtics

As the star big-man said, the Heat had to go through close to almost 40 different starting lineups throughout the season, especially in the postseason where they lost players like Jimmy Butler, Terry Rozier, and rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr. for the last game. Missing the first two were no doubt frustrating, especially when the competition in front of you was arguably the best team in the NBA with the Celtics.

Adebayo was going to give “everything” he had in elimination game

Going in to the ugly showing in Game 5, Adebayo was the sole bright spot for the team as he scored 23 points, recorded six assists, and collected five rebounds. The team relied on him for offense when no one else was contributing, resulting in 26 shot attempts, which is a rarity for the University of Kentucky product.

He played 36 minutes Wednesday night, but the insane foil in that statistic is that Adebayo didn’t take a single break until he was sat to start the final period when the game got out of hand. Playing that much time was always going to happen as he said that his approach for the game was the motivation of an “elimination game” and that the plan was to “go out there and give everything I got.”

“Going into the game, it’s an elimination game,” Adebayo said. “Backs against the wall, everybody counting us out, guys injured or whatever the case may be. At the end of the day, I’m still available to play. I’m going to be aggressive and go out there and give everything I got.”

On the season, Adebayo averaged 19.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game for the Heat while shooting 52.1 percent from the field. He has also been named a finalist for Defensive Player of the Year along side Minnesota Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert and San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama.

Erik Spoelstra calls Adebayo “a warrior”

At the age of 26-years old, it should be expected that Adebayo will continue to be one of the main faces of the Heat organization. Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra has been one of Adebayo’s biggest praisers and called him a “warrior” after the Game 5 loss and even admitted that he had “every intention of playing him 48 minutes” if the contest was close at all.

“I had every intention of playing him 48 minutes tonight if the game was within reach,” Spoelstra said. “Bam is a warrior. He’ll battle and he brought a competitive spirit tonight. But collectively, we were far from our best tonight and again, you have to credit Boston, they took control of this game,. You could sense they wanted this to end right now, tonight and not let this thing get it back to Miami. That’s a sign of a mature team.”

Adebayo talks Tyler Herr’s down performance for Heat in Game 5

A disappointing aspect of Game 5 and the Heat’s postseason stint this year as a whole was the performance of Tyler Herro as besides a few outings, especially in Game 2, he was relatively shut down. He finished with 15 points, making six of 19 attempts from the field as Adebayo talked about how Boston “got him out of his rhythm.”

“They definitely got him out of his rhythm,” Adebayo said. “Sending him different coverages, pressing him full court. They just took him out of his rhythm.”

For Herro, he averaged 20.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game while shooting 44.1 percent from the field this season which is his fifth with the Heat. He also spoke after the loss and said that he is “going to be able to take away a lot from how” the Celtics defended him and use that for the future.

“I obviously haven’t looked back on the whole series, it just ended, but feel like I’m going to be able to take away a lot from how they guarded me throughout the whole series,” Herro said. “The face guards, double teams, switches, really crowding the paint when I did get in the paint and then really making it tough on me at all times, not allowing me to kind of see one go through to catch a rhythm.”

Spoelstra says Miami will have “plenty of time” to reassess season

The weight of the team was put on the shoulders of Herro and Adebayo to come out and save the Heat’s season with the aforementioned injuries of Butler, Rozier, and Jaquez. However, Spoelstra says that their struggles shouldn’t be put on that excuse as he gave credit to Miami’s rivals in Boston.

“We’re not going to put this on the fact that we had some injuries,” Spoelstra said. “Let’s not take anything away from Boston. They’ve been the best team in basketball all season long. And in this series in four of the games, they played as such.”

Miami now enters an interesting off-season one year removed from their miraculous run from being the eighth seed then going to the NBA Finals. Spoelstra said that the team and front office will be “plenty of time” to go over the “autopsy” of the just finished season as he admitted that winning “two or three” games could have jetted a different path for them.

“We’ll have plenty of time to go through the autopsy on the regular season,” Spoelstra said, with exit interviews expected later this week. “It was super-competitive in both conferences, and two or three wins could have made monumental differences.”

The Heat finished 46-36 this regular season as they also were placed as the eighth seed for the second straight year losing their first play-in tournament game to the Philadelphia 76ers. What Pat Riley and company will do this summer should shape up the team for a fascinating next season.