LISTEN: Bam Adebayo tells wild story of pre-draft workout with Heat
Before he ever stepped foot on Kentucky’s campus, Bam Adebayo was physically built like a five-year NBA veteran. Arriving in Lexington as a 6-foot-10, 260-pound 18-year-old freshman, he looked the part of someone you didn’t want to mess with. A year later, the Miami Heat learned that the hard way, but it turned out to be exactly what the NBA franchise was looking for.
During a recent Lowe Post podcast appearance with Zach Lowe of ESPN, Adebayo and the basketball analyst talked for about 40 minutes to open the show, touching on various topics, some of which were non-basketball-related. The conversations ranged from Miami’s recent in-game “kerfuffle” that made headlines for supposed inner turmoil (which Adebayo understandably doesn’t go into too much detail on), why Adebayo has a case for Defensive Player of the Year, and even talked about the new dog that Adebayo’s mom now has.
While no reference of his time at Kentucky came up, Adebayo did tell a pretty wild story about his pre-draft workout with the Miami Heat. Adebayo spent just one season at Kentucky, earning All-SEC Second-Team honors, before declaring for the NBA as a projected lottery pick. He was ultimately drafted by Miami with the No. 14 overall pick in 2017.
But he might have been drafted by a different team altogether had Adebayo not cursed out team president Pat Riley, head coach Erik Spoelstra, and members of the Heat brass. As the story goes, Adebayo was upset that Miami was putting him in pre-draft defensive switching drills, seemingly “testing” him to see if he was capable of executing. Well, that apparently didn’t sit well with Adebayo…
“In that moment, when they’re telling me to switch everybody. Like the ball will go out of bounds they’ll be like ‘Bam, guard him at the top of the key, five seconds’ and I started realizing — after like the third or fourth time, ‘ya’ll f*****g with me at this point,’” Adebayo said on the Lowe Post. “So when I get the last stop, the ball rolls over there by Coach Riley, Spo(elstra), everybody, executives, Alonzo Mourning is over there. And I look at ’em like ‘you got me f****d* up’. I’m getting all these stops and there’s nothing more you need to see at this point. Like ya’ll got me f****d up out here thinking I’m gonna just crack.
“And in my mind, yeah it was a great idea. It was a great idea that I did it. Now backstory, I was kinda like damn, if they don’t like those type of players, this ain’t for me. Because this is who I am. When I feel like I’m tested I’m going to talk s**t, that’s part of basketball. I’m going to talk s**t, I’m gonna say what I need to say, and if you get offended then I can’t be on your team because every damn practice I’m gonna be like that. And they (Miami) loved it.”
Adebayo couldn’t help but laugh while retelling the story, specifically remembering the reactions he drew from the Heat decision-makers.
“It’s just a great story to tell. Just seeing their faces was like in awe,” Adebayo said. “They all started looking at me like ‘he just say we got him f****d up? This 18-year old kid has enough balls to tell the head coach, the president, everybody over there, you got me f****d up?’ And I felt like it was a moment where they was like nah this who we want. This is the dog mentality that we need in the culture.”
That mentality has created a perfect match between Adebayo and the Heat organization. Now in his fifth season with Miami, the 24-year old has collected one All-Star appearance and two All-Defensive Team picks, with likely a third on the way once the 2021-22 season comes to an official close. This season, Adebayo is averaging a career-high 19.1 points on 55.7 percent shooting in addition to 10.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists per outing across 56 games played.
You can listen to the entire Lowe Post episode at the link here if you’d like. For Adebayo’s part about the pre-draft workout, go to the 18:30 mark.
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