Miami Heat All-Star forward Bam Adebayo will miss Game 2 of the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday, as he continues to deal with pain in his left shoulder and neck, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Wojnarowski reported the Heat continue to hold out hope that Adebayo might return for Game 3. Miami, already trailing 1-0 in the series, will also be without Goran Dragic. The Slovenian guard was ruled out because of a plantar tear of his left foot, per Shams Charania of The Athletic.
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra explained after Thursday’s practice that Adebayo’s latest setback is different than the injured shoulder he suffered against the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
“It’s on the same side, so it’s easy to draw a comparison,” Spoelstra said. “But it’s a different injury.”
Adebayo suffered the neck injury when he slammed a shoulder into Dwight Howard while driving into the lane with 7:03 remaining in the third quarter of the team’s Game 1 loss. The team confirmed that X-rays taken at the arena were negative. But Adebayo was already clearly favoring the injury suffered in the conference finals, as he wore a sleeve on his left arm.
Adebayo scored eight points to go with four rebounds in 21 minutes of action of Game 1.
With Adebayo out for Game 2, it’s likely Spoelstra will try to replace his production on both ends of the floor with two players in veterans Kelly Olynyk and Meyers Leonard. Leonard started 49 games during the regular season, but hasn’t played since Sept. 4, when he logged nine minutes in a win over Milwaukee.
Olynyk, meanwhile, is averaging 5.8 points and 4.2 rebounds in the playoffs.
“We know exactly what Meyers and Kelly bring to our team, and hopefully we can exploit that to the best of our ability,” Heat forward Jae Crowder said. “Yeah, that’s the game plan. We know exactly how they can affect the game; just a matter of us putting them in position to help us win games.”
With Dragic also doubtful, it’s expected Miami will turn to first-team NBA All-Rookie guard Kendrick Nunn, who started 67 games during the regular season, but has averaged 12.4 minutes per game in the playoffs. Nunn played nearly 20 minutes after Goran’s injury in Game 1 and contributed 18 points on 8-of-11 shooting off the bench.
Nunn arrived at the NBA bubble 25 days later after testing positive for COVID-19, and largely fell out of Spoelstra’s postseason rotation, as he struggled to regain his rhythm from before the league’s hiatus, which started in March.
“It's just tough to see him in this position because he cares about the game, cares about his teammates, and he really wants to win,” Miami superstar forward Jimmy Butler said on Thursday about Adebayo. “Obviously, we want him out there with us. We know that we need him. He's been huge for us in the playoffs all year long in the sense of doing whatever he was asked to do, come off the bench, start, score, facilitate, whatever. But it's bigger than basketball. We care about him as a person. We want him to be right. I can talk to him as much as I can, but you can hear that pain in his voice, of him feeling like he may have let us down. But he did not, and I want him to know that. He's carried us to this point, and it's only our duty to pay that back to him right now.”
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Michael C. Wright is a senior writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here , find his archive here and follow him on Twitter .
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https://www.nba.com/article/2020/10/02/heat-bam-adebayo-out-game-2-vs-lakers
2020-10-02 20:17:00Z
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