While Erik Spoelstra was upset on Tuesday about the “dangerous play” from LaMelo Ball that caused Bam Adebayo to injure his lower back, the Heat‘s head coach was calmer when he was asked about the incident in Thursday’s exit interviews, per Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald.
“I’m not really thinking about that anymore,” Spoelstra said Thursday. “I said what I had to say about it. I didn’t think that he needed to be penalized more moving forward. I don’t think that would make sense. I don’t think he’s a dirty player. I just think, at the moment, both things can be true. In that moment, it was a dirty play, a dangerous play. It should have been caught at that moment, but it wasn’t. And then, you move on.”
Adebayo also addressed the play and said he didn’t have any previous history with Ball to suggest there was any “bad blood” between them. An X-ray on the big man’s back came back negative, Chiang writes, and Adebayo hasn’t undergone an MRI to this point.
“Obviously, I’m still walking, so I’m OK,” Adebayo said after walking gingerly, but without any assistance, to the microphone on Thursday.
As for the offseason, Adebayo said questions about potential roster changes should be directed to Spoelstra and president Pat Riley. But the three-time All-Star acknowledged that the team will “probably” look different after missing the playoffs, and Adebayo made it clear where his motivation lies.
“You see how the last four years have been,” Adebayo said. “You can go in and voice that. Everybody in this building knows I want to win. I put on that jersey almost every game through hell and high water just because I want to win. I want to put us in a position to win. When you don’t win, I always put it on myself. That’s me going in the summer trying to be better. Trying to figure out how I can take my game to the next level, how I can be a better captain.
“And the business side is not my side. To me, being able to share my opinion is more important because that means you have somebody actively listening to you. For them to listen is me telling them I want to win. That’s bottom line.”
Here’s more on the Heat:
- Norman Powell made his first All-Star team in his first season in Miami, but injuries caused him to miss extended time after the break and he only played 19 minutes in Tuesday’s play-in loss to Charlotte, Chiang writes for The Miami Herald. The veteran wing openly expressed a desire to sign an extension with the Heat early in the season, but he was more guarded when he discussed his future with the team on Tuesday. “They have to make decisions and things based on the team and where they want to be and what they want to do next year,” Powell said of the Heat. “Hopefully I’m a part of the plan. And if I am, great. Like I said, I like my time here. So we’ll just see where they’re at, where my agent is at, and what’s going on in free agency.”
- Although Spoelstra was understandably disappointed with an early end to the Heat’s season, he struck an optimistic tone about the development of young players like Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Pelle Larsson and Kasparas Jakucionis, according to Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald. “There was significant improvement. You saw his ability to compete in a meaningful game and produce in the moments of truth,” Spoelstra said of Ware. “There were a lot of ups and downs this year, but I appreciate his intention every day trying to work at it, get better. And he still has a big offseason ahead to make that next jump hopefully.”
- Simone Fontecchio, who will be a free agent this summer, has already made it known he’d like to re-sign with Miami. The 30-year-old said on Thursday that he likely won’t play with the Italian national team during World Cup qualifying games in July, tweets Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, but is hopeful he’ll be able to suit up for games in August once his free agency is resolved.
The EAST is too deep now – the margin for error, for even a well-coached team like the HEAT is thin …… three (3) games separated the 5th thru 10th spots in the EAST.
Injuries to Herro, Norm and Wiggins did them in this season. Scoring is all the rage these days after all.
FA class this offseason looks sparse ……. Giannis seems to be the only way to go.
They probably could have gotten more from Ware during the season.
Spoelstra didn’t want him to have too much protagonism. It seems that they took this stance with him:”You are our most talented young player, but it doesn’t mean we’ll center our team around you. If anything, we’ll be even harder on you.”
Kind of like when a teacher at school has a class full of dimwits, but one guy is smart and things come easily to him, and the teacher is hardest on him because he hopes that guy can get somewhere.
I know that Ware’s advanced stats and impact haven’t always been positive, but still, there was probably a way to get more out of him.
And I think that Spoelstra, just like Kerr, has often been guilty of tinkering with the squad and looking for something that’s not there too much, forgetting that there’s a season, and the games need to be won.
Often it just makes sense to play 5 players that are hardest to play against, and keep it like that for weeks and months, instead of trying to find clever rotations or invent a never-seen-before style of playing or whatever.
Yes, Spo (and Riles) has treated certain players this way – Bam went through it the hard way his rookie year ….. Spo, Riley, the HEAT has built up too much equity to get away with this kind of approach.
I don’t think Bam would have reached what he is now, if he were on another team.
The knock on Ware has always been his motor – he did made great strides from Indiana thru his 2 pro seasons ….. but bouts of “inactivity” still show from time to time, hence Spo is particularly hard on him.
Old school coaches like Spo, Kerr, Thibs, they’re about the wius first …… great potential is kept on a very short leash.
@mike
You lost me a bit and I’m not sure if it’s a grammatical error or something else. When you say “(They) has (have) built up “too much equity” to “get away” with this approach you mean what? Are you saying they have built to too much equity but THIS is the “wrong” approach? Or they’ve built up too much equity to second guess their approach?
I ask because I think trying to win games with vets like Powell, Wiggins, etc while trying to develop the key guys for your future like Ware, Larsson, Jaquez and Jakucionis AND maximize the prime of your franchise guys like Bam and Hero is a tough task to juggle.
@Knicks …… Spo & Pat’s approach works for the HEAT.
I mentioned equity, since this approach might not work with other teams, while the HEAT have so many success stories covering the entire gamut of players, superstars, undrafted ones and everyone in-between.
Like I said, Bam won’t have reached what he is now if he were drafted by another team.
Indeed, juggling everything is a tough task for any coach, hence I see many of the old-school coaches prioritize wins …… the HEAT are among a handful of teams who handles development as best as can be, without compromising wins.
Larsson & Jovic are prime examples of this ……. Larsson has Spo’s trust (and playing time) since he impacts winning – he makes all the right plays, scores and is a pest on defense.
Jovic is easily more talented, has a higher ceiling than Larsson yet he’s erratic, has bouts of errors on both ends of the court, hence his playing time has dipped way down even before the injuries.
Ware is one of the more interesting players I’m watching right now — and I’ll be transparent: I collect his rookie cards, so I have skin in the game. But I also try to stay intellectually honest, so I keep asking myself: what am I missing?
The “no motor” criticism follows him everywhere. And look, I’m not going to pretend bias doesn’t exist in how we evaluate certain players — Evan Mobley, KAT, Chris Bosh all got the “soft” label at some point. Sometimes elite athleticism reads as effortless, and effortless gets misread as indifferent. I’m not accusing anyone of anything. But the pattern is real.
What I can evaluate: Ware is averaging 11.1 points and 9.0 rebounds per game (Basketball-Reference.com) — a near double-double — while functioning as the third or fourth option. He can post up, run the floor, catch lobs, and among 7-footers who attempt 3+ threes per game, he’s shooting the highest percentage in that group this year. His per-36 production is Wemby-adjacent — roughly 18/15 with a steal and 2 blocks.
The real question is organizational: the Heat exercised his team option, so he has runway in their frontcourt (RotoWire) . But will they give him enough consistent minutes to actually evaluate whether he’s worth a max extension down the line? Because that’s where this is heading.
The Heat, Warriors, Bucks, Sixers, Lakers, and Mavs all fell into the same trap — extending the window through veteran trades while lacking the cap space and draft capital to meaningfully improve. For some of them it’s defensible; you don’t just walk away from HOF-caliber loyalty. But the compounding costs are real.
The Spurs blueprint is instructive — and honestly, it didn’t go smoothly at first. They traded DeMar, Murray, and White, released Aldridge, and committed to the rebuild. Then they whiffed badly in the early years: Primo at #12 over Sengun, Sochan at #9 over Jalen Williams and Jalen Duren, Branham at #20 over Braun, Kessler, and Watson. Those are significant misses. But they eventually hit with Wemby, Castle, and Harper — three foundational pieces — because they had the picks to swing at.
The Warriors’ waste of their own rebuild window stings the most. At #2 overall they took Wiseman and passed on Okongwu, Haliburton, Maxey, and Bane. Then in 2021, Kuminga at #7 — a player who may never fit that system — over Franz Wagner, who would’ve been a natural stretch-4 alongside Steph. And Moody at #14 over Sengun and Jalen Johnson, both of whom would’ve complemented the core beautifully.
The lesson: draft capital is everything in a rebuild. You can survive a few bad picks if you have volume. You can’t if you traded them all away chasing one more run.
You can’t incriminate them that pick in 2020. You know how it works, teams don’t really pick that high, they just get who is the consensus best player.
And why even bring up Maxey or Bane? They were picked in the 20s. No FO would ever take them with the 2nd pick. That’s revisionism.
Boozer will be drafted in the top-3. Even if he becomes a bust, and some guy in the 20s like that Spanish guy Mara plays themselves into the 3 best players in the draft, it doesn’t mean that years from now it will be right to say “They wasted that pick on Boozer, Mara was right there”. That’s not how drafting works.
The only choice GSW had was perhaps between Wiseman and Ball, and I’m pretty sure that at the time, the GSW organization and fanbase unanimously didn’t want LaMelo.
The 2021 draft they did indeed fumble. Looking at the quality of players who went in the first round, with 2 picks, it was almost harder to miss than to score. I still believe that there’s a very good player in Moody and that Kuminga can turn his career around. Neither of them benefited at all from going to GSW. But yes, I think there were better picks out there.
I’m European and biased towards players who do well over here. But I was screaming at my screen when my Wiz took Kispert while Sengun was on the board. Sengun, who was the best player in a tough Turkish league before being old enough to get drafted in the NBA. Just like Doncic, Wemby, Avdija, who were the same. MVPs in their national leagues before being old enough to declare for the draft.
Yeah, I agree with you, drafting is a numbers game. Sometimes your picks hit, sometimes they don’t. The best strategy is to get a lot of them.
If you look at the years 2015-2022, 40% of the top-4 picks have become stars. For picks 5-15 it’s about 20%. For the last half of the 1st round it’s 5%, and for the 2nd round it’s 1-2%.
Sometimes you get Curry at #6, other times Wiseman at #2. You just gotta hope that over the long haul you are better than average.