Former Heat coach calls Bam Adebayo overrated offensively

Not everyone sees the light at the end of the tunnel for the Miami Heat and that’s OK. Stan Van Gundy, the team’s former head coach before Pat Riley took over again in 2005-06, said on The Zach Lowe Show that Bam Adebayo is overrated offensively, which is sure to ruffle some feathers but it wasn’t unfair.

Still, I get it. Despite Van Gundy having coached the Orlando Magic's Finals trip in 2008-09, some Miami people are going to wonder about his offensive credentials when he couldn't figure out the ball needed to go to Shaquille O'Neal in the fourth quarter of Game 7 at home against the Detroit Pistons (2005).

Adebayo is very good, known mainly for his unforgiving  pressure and recently, logging the second-highest scoring game by a baller in NBA history (83 points), but he is yet to ascend to being a great player. His highest offensive output was 20.4 points per game on a 54.1 effective field goal percentage in 2022-23, which is when he wasn’t the main option on the team. In his first full season after the Jimmy Butler trade, his efficiency dropped to a 49.7 EFG percentage.

But so what? Plenty of players aren’t good enough to be the top scorer and those guys are usually rare. The guy we are talking about has shown results, as his offensive game was good enough to reach two NBA Finals when his running mate, Butler, wasn’t much of a sniper.

Winning a championship may not require him to take another leap since he’s next to a great player in Giannis Antetokounmpo, who compliments his strengths and puts more stress on an opposing defense than Butler because he is bigger, stronger and faster. 

Adebayo has an above-average handle for someone his size plus his supreme athleticism makes him a vertical threat who scores effectively up to the middle. The main weakness to Adebayo’s offense is that he is not a deep shooter like Chris Bosh. Still, coach Erik Spoelstra can counter if teams are going to leave him open at the arc by letting him take open shots, parking him at the dunker spot or using him as a secondary playmaker.

Specifically, he could attack the space opponents give him by setting a handoff or a screen for a shooter. Preseason has indicated that the Heat will play fast as they did last year, but there will probably be moments when they slow down, for matchup puposes and/or to preserve Antetokounmpo, and those moments can be effective with Adebayo at the lead.

Van Gundy is also not sold on Davion Mitchell being the answer at point guard, Antetokounmpo's durability and the team’s new 3-point shooters being good defenders, and he was obviously talking about Klay Thompson and Tim Hardaway Jr..

For this scribe, it’s hard to imagine Mitchell being incapable of playing the Mario Chalmers role or that Antetokounmpo’s body is severely weakened. Yet there's no argument against him on the shooters.

Nonetheless, the positives on this team outweigh far outweigh the concerns, and most of that is going to start with Antetokounmpo wanting to make it work.