Miami Heat big Bam Adebayo is one of the NBA’s best defenders. (Mandatory Credit: Eric Espada/NBAE via Getty Images)
Death, taxes, the Miami Heat sporting a top-flight defense.
Believe it or not, that’s been the trend since Bam Adebayo entered the starting lineup full-time in 2019-20.
You can’t refute that the Heat’s three-time All-Star has been indispensable for the team’s defense, which was a top-10 unit in each of the last six seasons entering 2025-26, including a top-5 unit twice.
Well, guess what? The Heat are on track to be a top-5 unit once again behind Erik Spoelstra’s brains and Bam Adebayo’s excellence. And the ninth-year big, who has finished top-5 in Defensive Player of the Year five times with five All-Defensive teams, still can’t fully grasp why he hasn’t gotten any hardware for what he’s had to cover up on that end of the floor.
“The goalposts always move for me. We got a top-five defense, and it’s like I’ve heard nothing about it,” Adebayo said recently, according to Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald. “I do think I should be on an All-Defensive team. I feel like that’s understood. But people might try to pick other dudes or whatever the case may be.
“They try to use anything. I don’t even know what the criteria is anymore because at first it was about winning, and then you got guys that aren’t winning that are on the team. It’s confusing to the criteria, but I’ve always prided myself on defense. I do think I deserve to be All-Defensive team, first team. We got a top-four defense, so that is the level of DPOY. So yeah, the numbers don’t lie.”
Bam Adebayo completely changes the way teams attack Heat:
(Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images)
Adebayo’s long been regarded as one of the most versatile players in the NBA — especially defensively. He can switch, blitz, hedge and play in drop — despite being slightly undersized — at an incredibly high level. Adebayo has excellent hand-eye coordination, a strong center of gravity, good foot speed and hip mobility and remarkable instincts.
He prides himself on the defensive end as much as anyone. And Adebayo believes he deserves more recognition because he knows how much opposing offenses try to scheme him out of each possession.
“From my peers and the people who play against me and understand that you’ve got to put me in the corner, so I don’t miss up your offensive schemes, that’s what matters more,” Adebayo said. “When we get in these playoffs and they’re like, ‘No, don’t go to the screen with him. Put him in the strong side corner and just let him stay there. If we get a switch, swing it, swing it to somebody else.’ I don’t even know if you can count that as a stat. But that’s real in basketball, and a lot of people who are doing surveys wouldn’t know that. They just think because, ‘Oh, he’s a DPOY because he has five blocks a game.’”
Adebayo doesn’t always record a ton of “stocks” (steals and blocks), Tuesday’s blowout win notwithstanding. But the Heat are 4.8 points per 100 possessions better defensively when he’s on the floor (84th percentile), according to Cleaning The Glass. He’s improved their defensive output by at least 3.5 points per 100 each of the last five seasons, including by 5.0 points twice.
That’s elite.
No disrespect to his teammates, but for most of his career, he’s carried the unit while being surrounded, for the most part, by slightly above-average defenders, at best. Jimmy Butler, Pelle Larsson, Davion Mitchell and Andrew Wiggins are a few exceptions. But he’s carried most of the water, and he should eventually get more hardware because of it.
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