Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo (13) reacts after making a basket during the second half of a game against the Phoenix Suns on Jan. 13, 2026, at Kaseya Center in Miami. Alie Skowronski askowronski@miamiherald.com
Just one week ago, Miami Heat center and captain Bam Adebayo was in the middle of one of the worst offensive slumps of his NBA career.
Three games later, Adebayo is in the middle of his best offensive stretch of the season.
Entering the Heat’s five-game West Coast trip that begins Monday night against the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco, Adebayo is averaging 27 points, 8.3 rebounds, 4.3 assists and one steal per game while shooting 50 percent from the field and 13 of 23 (56.5 percent) from three-point range over the last three games.
This comes after Adebayo was averaging just 11.4 points per game on 37.1 percent shooting from the field and 5-of-23 (21.7 percent) shooting from three-point range over his previous 11 games.
“Staying true to myself,” Adebayo said ahead of Monday’s matchup against the Warriors when asked how he snapped out of his recent offensive slump. “You got to quiet the noise a lot. And having somebody on your staff you can talk to. [Heat assistant coach] Caron Butler is somebody that he’s like my big brother. Throughout that stretch of — I wouldn’t even say bad games, just a slump offensively because I didn’t play bad defensively — he was always in my ear. He’s the one person I can really go to and talk about what I’m going through on the court, what he sees.”
Butler, who is in his sixth season as a Heat assistant coach on Erik Spoelstra’s staff, also played for the Heat before becoming a coach. After being drafted by Miami with the 10th overall pick in 2002, Butler spent the first two seasons of his NBA career with the Heat before being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 as part of a package to acquire Shaquille O’Neal.
“Being able to have somebody like that in your corner, like they care,” Adebayo, 28, continued on Butler. “And you need that when you’re going through the worst of the worst and also the highs. So, CB is one of those people that I always call on when everything’s going great, but also when things are going bad.”
During this positive three-game stretch, Adebayo set a new career-high with six three-point makes on his way to totaling 30 points in Saturday’s home win over the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder. He also recorded 12 rebounds, four assists and one steal while posting a team-best plus/minus of plus 11 in the victory.
Even after Adebayo’s recent shooting slump, he still entered Monday ranked in the 84th percentile in estimated offensive plus/minus, 95th percentile in estimated defensive plus/minus and 92nd percentile in estimated overall plus/minus this season, according to Dunks & Threes.
“Bam was sensational,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo’s dominant display against the Thunder. “When you have one of these kinds of games where you just have to do it by any means necessary, you want somebody like Bam leading the way, leading the charge. It was his competitive will. He’s being so decisive now offensively, and you’re getting the whole package. You’re getting the scoring, you’re getting the playmaking, you’re getting the facilitating. You’re getting all of it.”
Bam Adebayo #13 of the Miami Heat controls the ball against the Oklahoma City Thunder during the first half at Kaseya Center on January 17, 2026 in Miami. Carmen Mandato Getty Images
A big part of this recent hot shooting stretch for Adebayo comes down to simply making more threes since he’s taking more shots from behind the arc than ever.
According to Cleaning the Glass, a career-high 27 percent of Adebayo’s field-goal attempts this season have come from three-point range. For perspective, only 3 percent of Adebayo’s field-goal attempts came from three-point range two seasons ago during the 2023-24 campaign.
“I don’t care about what anybody says about me offensively,” Adebayo made clear. “They’re going to move the goalposts for me every night. If I don’t shoot enough, I’m not being aggressive. Shoot too much, it’s the wrong shot diet. So my teammates, my coaching staff, they know what I’m capable of. Obviously, every shot that I take, I work on all the time. And Spo knows that, Spo sees it. So it’s not a shocker that I shoot certain shots. ... People are looking at my shot chart saying I’m shooting too many threes. But you play the right way and you’re open, he wants you to shoot the ball. So I have enough confidence in myself to shoot that [shot].”
The Heat wants and needs Adebayo to continue to be aggressive and assertive on the offensive end, whether shots are going in at an efficient rate or not.
“We want him to be aggressive, we want him to attack,” Heat guard Norman Powell said. “We want him to take what the defense is giving him. And I thought these last couple of games, he’s playing with a clear mind, a clear head, and he’s just making a read, taking what the defense is giving him and attacking and living with the results. But when he’s knocking down shots like that, the floor opens up for us, especially with him being able to space it. They don’t have a rim protector because they have a five on him. Or if they try to go small ball, it’s beneficial to us because we can pin him in the post and now they’ve got a double team and we can play off those actions and get into the paint. And that’s when we get into our offense. So him and his versatility is huge for us.
“I want him to continue to be aggressive, continue to be assertive, even if the shots aren’t falling for him. We need that aggressiveness out of him because it opens everything up.”