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Stephen A. Smith Responds Passionately to Bam Adebayo’s Recent Message to DPOY Skeptics

Posted on by angelo
Stephen A. Smith Responds Passionately to Bam Adebayo’s Recent Message to DPOY Skeptics

Miami Heat big man Bam Adebayo doesn’t seem to think he gets enough credit for anchoring a Heat defense that consistently ranks among the best in the NBA, and ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith seems to agree.

Adebayo has made headlines with his recent comments on the subject.

“A point guard (Marcus Smart) passed me, a center (Rudy Gobert) passed me, a power forward (Jaren Jackson Jr.) passed me,” Adebayo told Yahoo! Sports of winning Defensive Player of the Year. “The goalposts are moving for me, to a certain extent. It’s me and a lot of undrafted guys, and we still have a top-five defense.”

“These other guys have All-NBA guys (around them). Part of it is they don’t really care about us and that’s okay. I think they should be more careful about consistency because being a top-five DPOY, I think I have the longest All-Defensive team streak, so the goalposts are moving for me.”

On Friday, Smith responded.

Adebayo has long been among the NBA’s top defenders. He has finished in the top five in Defensive Player of the Year voting each of the last five seasons and finished third behind Rudy Gobert and Victor Wembanyama for the award last season.

The 26-year-old also made five consecutive All-Defensive Team appearances and earned the first All-Defensive First Team nod of his career during the 2023-24 campaign for his contributions in the least glamorous area of ​​the field.

The Heat haven’t been one of the Eastern Conference’s best teams during the 2023-24 regular season, as the team had to battle its way through the play-in tournament to qualify for the playoffs. But it’s hard to pin Miami’s irregular regular season on the team’s defense.

After all, the Heat finished with the fifth-best defensive rating of any team in the league during the regular season, at 111.5. Three of the four teams that posted higher defensive ratings — the Boston Celtics, Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder — won at least one series in the 2024 NBA playoffs, and Boston won the title.

One of the things that has made Miami a recognized defensive team is its ability to prevent opponents from scoring in the paint. The Heat have allowed just 46.4 points per game in the paint, which ranks third among NBA teams behind the Timberwolves and Chicago Bulls.

And it’s questionable whether the Heat would have been able to prevent scoring in the paint at this level without Adebayo and what he brings as a rim protector. Adebayo averaged a team-best 0.9 blocks per game in his seventh season in Miami while using his versatility to impact other areas of the floor on defense.