Heat’s Bam Adebayo looking to be ‘ultra-aggressive from the start’ more often after career night against Nets

The signs that Bam Adebayo was due for a career night in the Miami Heat’s 128-124 road loss Saturday night to the Brooklyn Nets appeared early and often.

There were the 12 points on 3-of-6 shooting in the first quarter to go along with 6-of-7 shooting from the free-throw line, with Adebayo seemingly looking to put the scoring load on his shoulders more than he typically does.

What followed was a steady scoring output towards a career-high 41 points: nine points in the second quarter, eight points and four assists on 3-of-3 shooting in the third before scoring another 12 on 4-of-5 shooting in the final period with Adebayo being the engine of the Heat’s comeback attempt that ultimately fell short at the Barclays Center.

“I’m stepping into a bigger role,” said Adebayo, with his 41 points surpassing his previous career-high of 32 that came in the Heat’s Eastern Conference finals Game 6 win against the Boston Celtics that sent Miami to last season’s NBA Finals. “From now on, I have to be ultra-aggressive from the start.”

The fourth-year big man knew he had to be more assertive as a scorer against the Nets than he was in the Heat’s 101-81 loss to the Toronto Raptors on Friday, when he scored 14 points on 6-of-13 shooting and made both of two free throws he attempted.

Adebayo went 14-of-20 from the field and 12-of-14 from the line against Brooklyn, with the 20 field goal attempts tying the career high in shots attempted that he set in a Feb. 20, 2020 loss to the Atlanta Hawks last season.

“I came out aggressive from the jump and just kept going,” he said. “Coach kept feeding me the ball.”

With two of the team’s leading scorers in Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro sidelined, the Heat needed every second of Adebayo’s aggressiveness coming off a back-to-back that had the team travel from Tampa — where the Raptors are playing their home games this season due to Canadian COVID-19 protocols — to Brooklyn overnight.

“He’s just a competitor,” Duncan Robinson said. “We follow him. He’s our leader.”

Adebayo’s performance made him the 11th Heat player to score 40 or more points in a game and the second youngest to do it behind former Heat star Dwyane Wade.

“I didn’t know I had 40 until the end of the game,” Adebayo said. “It just felt like I was out there hooping.”

Although it came in a loss, what may have been the most encouraging takeaway from Adebayo’s showing against the Nets was the diversity he displayed in his scoring skillset while he dishing out the punishment.

He recorded seven post-ups to go along with seven isolation possessions against the Nets, according to Heat.com’s Couper Moorhead, continuing a career-spanning trend of Adebayo seeing a steady uptick in creating his own offense.

After finishing less than 3 percent of his possessions in isolation during his first and second years in the league, Adebayo finished 7.6 percent of his possessions in isolation and the Heat scored 0.81 points per possession in those situations last season.

This year, he’s finishing isolating on 12.3 percent of possessions and Miami’s scoring 1.41 points per possession in those instances.

“It was about time Bam had 40,” Nets guard Kyrie Irving said, “in terms of getting a lot of those moves he’s been working on in the offseason.”

Adebayo’s 10-of-15 shooting away from the rim, including a 3-pointer at the end of the first half, against the Nets displayed both the evolution of his trust and effectiveness in his jump shot.

Forty percent of Adebayo’s jump shots last season were midrange shots (at least four feet away from the basket, but within the 3-point line), which he made at a 38 percent clip, per Cleaning the Glass data. This year, 59 percent of his shots are from mid-range and he’s shooting 53% on those looks, including 55 percent on long 2-pointers.

“The best thing right now is that midrange shot,” Goran Dragic said. “He’s knocking down the shot regularly and it’s really helped his game.”

The Heat are hoping Adebayo continues to show this part of his game and stay aggressive even as the team becomes more whole soon.

“All of my teammates feed me that positive energy,” Adebayo said. “They want me to be aggressive. When Tyler and Jimmy get back, they’ll probably want me to go for 40 again. It’s one of those things, man, coach is just letting me off the leash and letting me go.”