Miami Heat All-Star big man Bam Adebayo blamed his team’s 121-108 defeat to the Boston Celtics in Game 5 in the NBA Eastern Conference Final on Friday night.
“I played like S,” De Debayo said after the game at Lake Buena Vista in Florida. “Bottom line. I put that game on me. It’s not my teammate’s fault, it’s not my coach’s fault, it’s me. … I missed a lot of shots I made. Put it on me.”
Adebayo, playing in the left-arm sleeve after an apparent injury at the end of the Heat Game 4 win, recorded a triple-double with about 38 points, 13 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists, but he didn’t do it Performs up and down, especially on the defensive end.
“I wasn’t the defensive anchor I should have been,” Adebayo said. “I don’t think I was communicating fast enough. I think I’m one step behind today.”
Acadબbio was not the only player in the second half of Friday’s game, as the Heat were seen erasing a 58-51 halftime lead in the third quarter in which the Celtics dominated 411-6-2 and never looked back on their path. To cut the Miami series 3-2. According to ESPN statistics and data research, this is the 18th time this season the heat has been marked, while a lead of 10 or more points has been blown. He is the most connected by the team in the last two seasons, including the playoffs.
The numbers also back up that Adebayo struggled more than usual on Friday night. Adebayo gave up 1.65 points per straight pick-and-roll as a screener defender, according to second-spectrum data. It is the fourth worst performance given in a career game with at least 10 screens. Heat all-star Jimmy Butler said he was frustrated with his team’s efforts, but stood up for Adebayo when an attempt was made to blame the 23-year-old for the damage.
“it’s not [on Adebayo], “Butler said.” It’s on everyone. It does a lot for us that it seems like that from time to time, but it’s definitely not on it. It is entirely up to us. We all understand why no one was playing the way we were supposed to, the way we had to play to win. No one And to tell her, I respect her, I love her for it. But she can’t do it herself – we’ll go there with her. “
When asked what special injury he was dealing with on the left side, Adebayo simply said, “I’m fine.”
Heat coach Eric Spolstra also dispelled the notion that Adebayo was doing exactly the right thing.
“He wasn’t in favor of it,” Spoilestra said. “We’re not making any excuses. Boston outscored us in the second half. We probably outscored them in the first half and in the second half they looked at us two or three times as much as we did in the first half. Forty-eight minutes, that’s a long time. It’s a game and you have to play a lot longer than tonight. “
Butler said he would talk to de Debayo before Sunday’s game 6 and give his little teammate a little peep talk.
“I will,” Butler said. “But I think he knows you can’t hang on to this game anymore. We’ll learn from him, it’s a thing of the past. But we need to be who we are on Sunday. We all need to be that way. We’re going to see, we’re going to learn from it, not saying we don’t already know what went wrong, but we’re going to be ready to go. We’re going to fix it. “
Spoilestra also dismissed the notion that the Heat is worried about dropping the 3-1 series lead in the same way the Utah Jazz and LA Clippers have already done against the Denver Nuggets in the postseason bubble.
“I don’t think the series has anything to do with this,” Spoilestra said. “Our people are well aware. We have a lot of respect for Boston. We don’t expect it to be easy. You have to earn it. And we’ll just learn from this, go to work tomorrow and try to get ready for it. Now and then.” “
Adebayo is confident he will do well in Game 6 as well.
He said, ‘I was going to get better.’ “That’s the bottom line. Just. There’s no excuse for this … The game is on me. I played terrible and it can’t happen.”
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