During the first half of Wednesday night’s 122-112 loss to the Denver Nuggets, the Miami Heat were dealt a massive blow with Bam Adebayo exiting the game with a left foot injury.
Adebayo was injured after taking a step during a pitch back to guard Norman Powell in transition. He hobbled off the court and headed to the locker room and did not return.
Adebayo played just eight minutes, finishing with two points and one rebound, making one of his five shot attempts.
The star center provided an injury update after the game.
“I felt a pain in my foot so I took it upon myself to check myself out and go see what happened,” he said, per the team. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get more tests tomorrow and see how it goes.”
Why Heat cannot afford losing Bam Adebayo:
You could argue that Adebayo is, very easily, the most important player to this roster.
While the Heat have mitigated Tyler Herro’s absence with a combination of quality offensive performances from Adebayo himself, Norman Powell, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Andrew Wiggins, among others, the Heat don’t have a capable back-up big outside of Kel’el Ware.
Precious Achiuwa wasn’t a good answer (he’s no longer on the roster for good reason; he was unplayable in preseason); Vlad Goldin, currently, isn’t a good enough answer; Keshad Johnson and Nikola Jovic aren’t bigs.
Adebayo is irreplaceable because of what he provides on both ends on a night-to-night basis. He’s even more replaceable when you look at their big room. It was always way too thin to justify.
We will learn more in the coming days about how healthy the 6-foot-9 big man actually is. It’ll be next man up for Jovic, Ware and others.
There’s still a lot of season ahead, but the margin for error over any stretch where Adebayo misses time is microscopic.
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spos house caught on fire dam
Hm, somebody disappointed with last night outcome played with matches?
im scared of matches and jokers 2
Bam is so critical to everything we are all hoping it’s minor. Hopefully it’s only a game or two, max. None would be best 😛
b2b games should never happen adam la la 2u
I hope you are on the phone Pat. Unfortunately, you will be calling from a position of weakness/desperation. If you had done it earlier, it would have been from a position of strength. You might need to trade away a good rotation player to get a quality PF/C. You may even need to trade a starter like Herro in order to get a quality big and other assets (young player(s) and draft pick(s). Oh well. You live and you learn.
You were talking about the need for depth here. So, was I, as were others. They did try but the pickings are quite slim except for a trade, which is why we also talked about going that route. It wasn’t like the need wasn’t obvious.
And now, you are also right that responding after the fact is not ideal. But, perhaps the thought was they wanted to clear up the Rozier situation before making a move. I know Terry’s situation has made for a lot of uncertainty.
There may be a silver lining in that if this is a minor injury, it could be that getting another big will only make us stronger. But, if it’s a long term injury, it will hurt us for this season. .
Thanks 30. I like to think proactively rather than waiting for s*** to blow up and being forced to be reactive.
Ware is young and inexperienced. He’ll need time to become a quality two way center. Meanwhile, even with Bam healthy, if Ware has an off night Spo needs to have someone available to call on.. If Ban is injured, forgetaboutit. Johnson is too raw and Jaquez is too small. Jovic is not a C or PF, he’s a SF. Same with Fontecchio. Other than Goldin, Miami has no other player available who can fill the role.
Riley should not wait to address this issue or he may find he has a play-in or lottery team rather than a potential contender. With Zion out again and New Orleans floundering, maybe now is the time to explore trading Herro and ? for Dejounte Murray and one of the Pelicans’ bigs. They have several. Dejounte will be back in late December or early January and could be a quality point guard. With Mitchell, Jaquez and a quality big leading the second unit, Miami should be able to hold its own in the playoffs.
The time to procrastinate has passed for Pat. Its time for him o get on the phone and earn his money. Otherwise, he should plan on having a fire sale prior to the deadline and getting all the young prospects and draft picks he can get.
P.S. Unless the Rozier situation is resolved quickly, Pat should not bank on anything coming through for a while regarding additional cap space.
Bol Bol and Kai Jones still available in free agency
I agree. This is the conundrum many sports teams face. Most teams have holes or weaknesses somewhere. And sometimes the holes are too big to address in one year and going thru all the effort to upgrade will only have minimal effect. And making trades and matching up salaries can be quite complicated and may lead to getting fleeced. But, this team appears to be a team with adequate potential to try to see if we can make some noise this year. And, even though our players’ skillsets are somewhat different, we are a team that has a surplus of smaller players and a shortage of big ones. We also have an unusual pending issue with Rozier. There are obstacles to fixing this situation but we still should try to.
Riley needs to decide if he wants to put together a contending team or accept having another mediocre one. If he decides mediocre is acceptable, I would prefer it be with assets from trades made before the deadline.
If Riley accepts mediocrity, I can see players like Wiggins and Powell walking away next summer for new contracts with better teams
define contender?
A team with a shot at winning Eastern Conference or beyond. Not the likelihood, just the potential if they play their best basketball. Not like last year.
Not good. Loss and injury to the captain. Back to back games coming next. Really not good