Bam Adebayo on Heat trip to D.C., ‘I’m not leaving my room’

Getting through the tumult of Wednesday was difficult enough for the Miami Heat, with uncertainly lingering until just before tipoff of whether their game against the Boston Celtics at AmericanAirlines Arena would be played.

The next stop for the Heat? The epicenter — with Saturday’s game against the Washington Wizards opening a four-game trip.

Based on the chaos in D.C. on Wednesday, and amid a climate of anger over the decision in Wisconsin not to prosecute those involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake, Heat center Bam Adebayo said refuge and comfort, for a Black man such as himself, are hard enough to find, let alone this weekend in Washington.

“I’m not leaving my room,” Adebayo said of the Heat’s Friday departure to Washington. “After seeing something like that, I’m not leaving my room. I’m an African-American man. I’ve got to live with that. I’ve got to be cautious everywhere I go.

“You never know who I’m picking to be the deciding person to be like, ‘I’m going to ruin his life today,’ or ‘I’m going to take something away from him that he really loves.’ Like I said, being an African-American man, you can tell there’s two Americas we’re living in. They don’t want us to be equal.”

The emotion in the wake of the Heat’s last-second loss to the Celtics was raw and real, and for reasons far beyond the two-point defeat.

“Imagine if a mob of Black people wanted to go in the White House,” Adebayo said. “Imagine what’d happen. It’d be tear gas. It’d be rubber bullets. It’d be the whole nine yards.”

The messages from both Wisconsin and Washington were disheartening to the degree that an 11th-hour call was made from Celtics coach Brad Stevens to Heat coach Erik Spoelstra ahead of the game.

“We scrapped warmups, sat in the locker room and talked,” Stevens said. “To be honest, at 30 minutes [before tip-off], I didn’t think we were playing. Coaches left the room, players finished talking and chose to play. I called my wife and told her I don’t think we’re playing, and 10 minutes later we had decided to.”

That’s when the call was made to Spoelstra.

“Brad was great,” Spoelstra said. “He called me, and it was probably five minutes before I was going into the locker room. I almost did a double-take at my phone. And, so, I thought, ‘Oh, s—t, something’s going on.’ So I picked up. And then just as I was picking up [public-relations staffer] Michael Lissack came into my office also to let me know.”

The teams instead opted to kneel for the national anthem.

Heat center Meyers Leonard stood as an exception, as he had during the league’s quarantine bubble over the summer at Disney World, as a message of support to his brother’s military service.

Following the game, Leonard posted on Instagram:

“I STAND FOR the men and women, like my brother who have served this country. “I STAND AGAINST the violence and riots in DC. “I STAND in solidarity with my teammates and brothers. “I STAND AGAINST bigotry, racism, and hate. “I STAND FOR HOPE that our country can one day stop using our differences to divide us and SEE how our HEARTS can unite us. “I STAND WITH LOVE in my heart for EVERYONE.”

Saturday will mark the first home game for the Wizards since the incursion at the U.S. Capitol. The Wizards first play Friday night in Boston.

“It’s just crazy, almost like a movie when I see it,” said Wizards guard Russell Westbrook, who joined the team in the offseason. “Talking to people, and obviously now being in D.C. and my family there, it definitely hits a little different for me now.”