"He Can Make It Work" - Miami Heat Star Bam Adebayo Shows Trust On Head Coach Erik Spoelstra Despite Team’s Slow Season Start

Bam Adebayo praises Erik Spoelstra© Getty and Instagram/ Bam1of1

Anyone who's followed the Miami Heat for a few years knows the pattern. Miami loses a star, or adds one, or hits a bad stretch, and Erik Spoelstra somehow ends up with a functioning team anyway. Bam Adebayo has watched it up close for most of his career. so when people ask whether this new group with Giannis Antetokounmpo can come together, he isn't worried. Bam showed his trust in the coach, saying that he can make it work.

Bam Adebayo Believes In Erik Spoelstra

Bam pointed straight at his coach's track record, and he skipped the obvious parts. “His resume says it all and I'm not even talking about the championships.” Referring to the 2016-2017 Heat team situation, he added, “I'm talking about the teams that he took to the finals, the team that started off 11-30, teams where he's had 70%-80% of the team being undrafted guys. He can make it work — he's one of the best in the business.”

It's an interesting way to defend him. Most people would just list the rings. Bam went for the harder cases: a team buried at 11-30, and rosters made up mostly of players nobody drafted. His point is that Spoelstra has built winners out of far less than what he has now. A roster with two All-Stars in the frontcourt should be an easier job, at least on paper.

Where The Heat Stand Right Now

Paper and reality don't always match, though, and the start was rough. Miami opened the season 0-4, and the new pairing of Giannis and Bam took heat for it. Things have improved since. The Heat won five of their next seven and sit at 5-6 after finishing a West Coast road trip with a 115-109 win in Utah. That put them at 3-2 on the five-game trip.

Spoelstra made a real change to get there. After a loss to Golden State on Nov. 5, he put Pelle Larsson in the starting lineup in place of Andrew Wiggins. The numbers explain it. The original starting five, with Mitchell, Giannis, Adebayo, Wiggins and Klay Thompson, had a net rating of minus-9.1 across 109 minutes. None of this proves the Heat are fixed. Beating a depleted Jazz team is not the same as beating real contenders, and the Heat still have a lot to sort out. But the trend is moving the right way, and it suggests Bam knows his coach better than the critics do.