Heat center Bam Adebayo is listed as questionable for Game 2 against the Hawks on Tuesday due to a quad contusion, Joe Vardon of The Athletic tweets. After being cleared from the league’s health and safety protocols, Adebayo finished Sunday’s game with six points, six rebounds and five assists in 28 minutes. However, coach Erik Spoelstra said Adebayo played a giant role in the team’s victory, Vardon writes.
“Who (cares) about his scoring,” Spoelstra said. “Bam is an ultimate winner. A lot of what you guys are probably going to write about what we can do defensively; he’s the one that’s driving it. If you don’t have a guy like Bam, you know, it’s very difficult to do some of the schemes, and he fully understands that.”
We have more on the Heat:
- Jazz center Rudy Gobert, Suns guard Mikal Bridges and Celtics guard Marcus Smart were the finalists for the Defensive Player of the Year award and Adebayo was upset he did not make the list, according to Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald. Smart won the award and Adebayo finished fourth in the voting, receiving 13 out of 100 first-place votes. “Disrespectful, honestly,” he said. “I feel like I can do anything that two out of the three can do besides the fact that I can’t teach height. But they all three play on TV more than me, so I would expect that. They get more TV games and they get more exposure. People like to talk about them more. Nobody wants to talk about us. So it’s whatever at that point.”
- Duncan Robinson, who scored 27 points in Game 1, admits it was tough to lose his starting job, Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald writes. “We’re all competitive,” said Robinson, who is the first year of a five-year, $90MM contract. “I take a lot of pride in doing my job to the best of my ability. At the end of the day, there’s disappointment but you sacrifice and give in to what’s most important to this group. The focus quickly shifts to how can I embrace the role I do have and contribute to winning and help us advance?”
- Kyle Lowry brought a championship pedigree from Toronto and knows how difficult it is to win a title, Vardon writes. “Me getting a championship just made me want another championship,” Lowry said. “It made me understand that it’s hard to get there. It takes some skill, it takes hard work, it takes some luck. It takes a lot of things to go your way to win a championship. I’ve lost a bunch of game 1s and won series. I won a couple Game 1s and lost the series. It’s just, you’ve got to be able to stay even keel no matter what.”