Heat’s Adebayo: Too much of a good thing led to bad results; Caleb Martin again sidelined

Apparently having it all might have been too much for the Miami Heat.

At least that’s one perspective offered Monday by center Bam Adebayo when it comes to the team’s late-season struggles.

“I mean this is the first time all of us have been truly healthy,” he said ahead of Monday night’s game against the Sacramento Kings at FTX Arena. “So it was bound to happen at some point, having guys in and out of the rotation and then we finally get healthy at the end of the year and you’re trying to manage everything, like everybody’s playing well, one through 15, and you’ve got to pick one through nine.

“And I feel like that’s the difficulty behind it and that’s the human nature. You’re going to have guys frustrated. You’re going to have guys not knowing what’s going on, because they’re in and out of the rotation.”

To a degree, Adebayo said that made the days of lengthy injury lists easier to navigate.

“When you have a smaller [rotation], it’s easier, like these are the five guys, these are the seven guys you can get the job done with, and go from there,” he said. “But when you’ve got one through 15, that’s when I feel like it gets a little tricky.”

What shouldn’t be impacted, Adebayo said, is the tenacity that was offered in moving to the top of the Eastern Conference before the four-game losing streak the Heat carried into Monday night.

“That’s the thing with this team,” he said, “I feel like you’ve got that underlying grit, where we can get through anything. Because a lot of us have been through a lot to get to this point. So I feel like a lot of us look at this like, this is nothing compared to this or that that we’ve all gone through individually. So us coming together and getting it done shouldn’t be a problem.”

Only last week’s losses to the Philadelphia 76ers, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets said otherwise.

“Adversity brings out your true character, in my opinion, so that’s when our character kicks in and we show who we are,” he said. “Every team goes through it. It just so happens ours is right now.

“But how I feel about it, we got a great group of guys that can collaborate and actually bring this back together.”

So instead of running away with the East, the pack has caught up.

“I mean competition at the highest level. We’ve just got to look at it that way,” Adebayo said.

“So it’s our time to start working our way back to getting back to what we found to help us win, and going out there and enjoying the game, playing for one another and just being a collective unit.”

Socially limited

The toughest times often have been when Heat players have congregated to collectively move past adversity. But Adebayo said COVID concerns have changed that dynamic.

“I mean, we’ve all had that idea,” he said of some type of team function, “but it’s easier said than done, because of you got COVID restrictions and everybody’s trying to be healthy through the playoffs, and nobody wants to have a pop-up positive COVID test.”

As it is, the Heat will be subjected to a mandatory round of testing because of Sunday’s upcoming game in Toronto against the Raptors, with testing still required for re-entry into the United States.

Still short

Even with guard Gabe Vincent back from the toe issue that kept him out of the previous three games, the Heat went into Monday less than whole, with reserve forward Caleb Martin sidelined by a bruised right calf.

It is the latest in a recent string of ailments for Martin, who missed five games in a seven-game span in February due to a sore left Achilles, and then missed three games earlier this month due to a hyperextended left knee.

Martin had appeared in five consecutive games before this latest setback.

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