How will Bam Adebayo's injury affect the Miami Heat's battle for playoff seeding in the Eastern Conference?
The Heat announced Wednesday that Adebayo underwent surgery to repair a UCL tear in his right thumb. Sources told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski that Adebayo is expected to be out for four to six weeks.
He isn't Miami's best player (that's Jimmy Butler), and sixth man Tyler Herro averages more points per game. But Adebayo, the All-Defensive second team pick each of the past two seasons and an All-Star in 2020, might just be the Heat's most irreplaceable player. So an absence of at minimum the 15 games Miami will play over the next four weeks and potentially up to 21 over the next six weeks will have a major impact on the Heat's record.
With Miami near the top of a pack of 10 East teams separated by just 2.5 games in the standings, any downturn for the Heat could have major implications. Let's take a look at how Miami will play without Adebayo and what his absence might ultimately mean to their playoff positioning.
How the Heat replace Adebayo
The center position for the Heat this season has been manned almost exclusively by Adebayo and backup Dewayne Dedmon, who has proven to be a find for Miami after he was out of the league to start the 2020-21 season. Having struggled with his 3-point shooting in 2019-20, when he hit just 21% beyond the arc, Dedmon has refocused his game on the interior and has shot 64% from the field during 37 games with the Heat over the past two seasons.
A starting role, however, might expose some of Dedmon's limitations -- particularly at the defensive end.
Miami is reluctant to switch Dedmon on guards, a defining strength for Adebayo. They've switched just 4% of on-ball picks with Dedmon defending the screener, per Second Spectrum tracking, as compared to 43% with Adebayo.
Not coincidentally, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has tended to go to zone defenses more frequently with Dedmon to hide his difficulty defending in space on the perimeter. Second Spectrum shows Miami playing zone nearly twice as frequently with Dedmon on the court (9% of possessions) as Adebayo (5%).
Those concerns go double for the third center on the Heat's roster, rookie Omer Yurtseven, a skilled scorer who is limited in terms of lateral mobility. Yurtseven has played sparingly in close games this season, with 28 of his 37 minutes coming in the fourth quarter, according to NBA Advanced Stats. Veteran leader Udonis Haslem has also seen only bit action, playing just 17 minutes -- already more than the three he logged all of 2020-21.
As a result, Miami will almost certainly rely on smaller lineups to fill in for Adebayo. It will help when forward Markieff Morris returns from a case of whiplash suffered when he was flagrantly fouled by Nikola Jokic on Nov. 8. For now, that probably means sliding 6-foot-5 P.J. Tucker to the middle, a role he played regularly with the Houston Rockets.
The good news for the Heat is the team's perimeter depth has proven better than expected. Miami is getting quality minutes from the trio of Caleb Martin, Max Strus and Gabe Vincent, all of whom have experience on two-way contracts. (Strus and Vincent were the team's two-way players last season before earning veterans minimum deals, while Martin is currently on a two-way.)
Still, Adebayo's absence leaves the Heat perilously thin if another one of their primary shot creators goes down.
Impact for Miami: A slip in seeding?
In a bit of small sample theatre, the Heat's offense has been dramatically better this season with Adebayo on the bench, scoring 10.2 more points per 100 possessions according to NBA Advanced Stats. This result is almost certainly a fluke.
Miami's offense was better with Adebayo last season, and the difference can primarily be traced to 3-point shooting: 32% with Adebayo on the court and 39% with him on the bench. According to Second Spectrum's quantified shot quality (qSQ) measure, the Heat are getting better shots with Adebayo in the lineup.
Redistributing Adebayo's minutes to a combination of Dedmon, Morris, the team's perimeter reserves and forward KZ Okpala implies a drop-off of about 1.2 points per 100 possessions based on these players' current talent ratings in Darko Plus-Minus (DPM). Over the course of a full season, that would be about a three-win drop-off.
Fortunately for Miami, Adebayo will miss only about a quarter of the season at most based on his current timetable, which would potentially be a one-win hit to the team's projection. In the crowded East, that could still make a crucial difference.
Although FiveThirtyEight's projections have the conference's fast-starting surprises slipping, Miami's 49-33 average record before the Adebayo injury was tied for third with the Philadelphia 76ers. One game back would put the Heat into a tie with the Atlanta Hawks for the fourth seed and home-court advantage in the first round. Two games back are the Chicago Bulls, and just three wins separate Miami's projection from the Boston Celtics in seventh, a spot that would require navigating the play-in tournament.
With a veteran roster that should perform best in the postseason, the most important thing for the Heat is getting there healthy. Adebayo's absence in December won't affect that, but it could translate into a more difficult postseason path.