Bam Adebayo is great, but I can’t be the only one who was expecting more from him this season. More as in more minutes; presumably, the rest of his stats would follow his increased playing time and he would be a double-double machine with some fancy passing thrown in.
I blame Kelly Olynyk, who has taken his minutes by being a different kind of center who can “stretch the floor” and “be white”. But can he dunk? I don’t think so. That’s one thing that Adebayo can definitely do. Even if sometimes he gets all the way up there and does one of those lame “soft deposit” slams where he doesn’t even grab rim. Those ones aren’t going in the Adebayo dunkilation. They aren’t dunks. They are hard layins.
I also blame Hassan Whiteside, whose gigantic contract means that the Heat are basically forced to play him at least a little bit. Udonis Haslem evades blame for now due to not ever getting to play, and I assume that he’s doing a good job teaching Adebayo and the other young players how to be a good pro. And how to stick around with the same team for ever and ever.