A closer look at Nuggets’ plan vs. Bam Adebayo and what it means for Heat offense in Finals

All-Star center Bam Adebayo opened the NBA Finals by setting a new career-high in field-goal attempts, but the Miami Heat opened the NBA Finals with its worst offensive performance of this year’s playoffs.

While Adebayo stood out with 26 points on a career-high 25 shots, the Heat’s offense struggled in Thursday’s Game 1 loss to the Denver Nuggets at Ball Arena with a playoff-low 93 points on 40.6 percent shooting from the field, 13-of-39 (33.3 percent) shooting on threes and shot just two free throws to set a new NBA record for the fewest free-throw attempts by a team in a playoff game.

“I thought Bam had some good opportunities right in his sweet spot and then also some opportunities at the rim,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said ahead of Sunday’s Game 2 in Denver (8 p.m., ABC). “Then I thought some of our detail with the spacing and the pace and our intention of our offense kind of got us jammed up.

“It always kind of could look different, a few of these threes go down at the right time, a few of the layups right at the rim or the short ones go down at the right time, that also could change your perspective or tenor of how you think things are going. But we do need to do things better. I think that part is clear.”

Adebayo is not the reason the Heat lost Game 1, but it is worth examining how Denver’s defensive strategy against him affected the rest of Miami’s offense.

Part of the Heat’s offensive game plan is to make Nuggets two-time MVP center Nikola Jokic work on defense by putting him in pick and rolls while guarding Adebayo.

With Jokic usually playing pick-and-rolls in a drop to protect the rim, Adebayo often found himself with plenty of space to operate around the free-throw line after a pocket pass from one of his teammates. There were other times that Adebayo was able to get in front of Jokic on pick-and-rolls, with Jokic having to jump out to shooters to allow Adebayo to get a four-on-three advantage as he rolled to the basket.

The result was the same most of the time, with Adebayo able to consistently get to an open midrange jumper. That’s where most of his offense came, as he shot 9 of 17 (52.9 percent) on non-rim two-pointers in Game 1.

“I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to ask the Nuggets,” Adebayo said when asked if he thought it was by design that Denver consistently left him open for that midrange shot. “But for me, it was just a great opportunity for me. I feel like all those shots were in my wheelhouse, and I’ve been shooting them all season.”

While Adebayo made a lot of those midrange looks on Thursday, it’s a problem when that’s the main source of the Heat’s offense. It also meant fewer shots for Adebayo’s co-star Jimmy Butler and the Heat’s three-point shooters.

That’s why similar opportunities may be there again for Adebayo in Game 2, as the Nuggets prioritize defending the three-point line and deterring the Heat away from the rim with the 6-foot-11 Jokic dropping into the paint.

“If you’re giving up tough mid-range contested twos, that’s better than them getting a lot of open threes,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said after the Game 1 win.

At media day on Saturday ahead of Game 2, Malone again was asked about the Nuggets’ strategy against Adebayo.

“We didn’t go in saying we’re going to make Bam Adebayo beat us. We came in with full respect for Bam Adebayo,” Malone said. “But if you’re going to score 26 points on 25 shots, that’s something we’re willing to live with. But we can do a better job. That’s something that we talked about today, giving him different looks, making sure we’re contesting, making sure we’re shrinking the floor, whatever it may be.”

Of what he can do better in defending Adebayo on his rolls to the basket, Jokic said: “I need to do a little bit better job just making him uncomfortable.”

The Heat shot just 7 of 27 (25.9 percent) from three-point range through the first three quarters of Game 1 before getting hot to make six of 12 three-point attempts in the fourth quarter. And only 21 percent of the Heat’s shots came at the rim on Thursday, a frequency that ranks in the NBA’s 21st percentile during this year’s playoffs.

“We shot a lot of jump shots, myself probably leading that pack, instead of putting pressure on the rim, getting lay-ups, getting to the free-throw line,” Butler said. “When you look at it during the game, they all look like the right shots. And I’m not saying that we can’t as a team make those, but got to get more layups, got to get more free throws. ... We’ve got to attack the rim a lot more, myself included.”

The Heat wants Adebayo to continue to be aggressive if the Nuggets continue to give him space around the paint, but other aspects of the offense also need to step up around him to keep up with a Denver team that has posted the NBA’s top offensive rating in the playoffs.

“That’s going to be big for us,” Heat forward Caleb Martin said of Adebayo’s continued assertiveness on the offensive end. “Just having the option and availability for him to get to his spots and get that. That’s the beauty of it, man. All we got to do is add that layer of what we’ve been doing, shooting threes and getting open and cuts and stuff like that. So just get back to doing what we’ve been doing.”

There are plenty of things the Heat’s offense can do better in Game 2.

Butler knows he needs to be more aggressive and score more than the playoff-low 13 points he totaled in Game 1. The Heat knows it got a bunch of clean three-point looks that it simply missed in Game 1, shooting just 5 of 16 (31.3 percent) on wide open threes on Thursday based on NBA tracking data. And the Heat is well aware that finishing a game with only two free-throw attempts is not enough.

“We want everybody being aggressive, everybody being a live option,” Spoelstra said. “Obviously, we want to get J.B. and Bam involved as much as possible. They are our two best players. We have to do it in different ways, so it’s not just a steady diet of whatever that may be. And there were certain aspects of what we did the other night were very good, and there are other areas offensively where we definitely need to improve and be more intentional.”