Miami Heat

He made a lot of mistakes in this last game but was far from the reason they lost.

He’s averaging 22 & 14 in his first healthy Finals series while doing as good a job on Jokic as anyones been able to do these playoffs. It’s the hardest defensive matchup in basketball and he’s taken it on while doing a ton offensively. He’s comfortably been their best player in these Finals and if the shooters were even remotely hot, he’d be in the conversation for Finals MVP right now.

He’s not above criticism but god damn this sub has spent hours and hours and hours whining about how he never shows up. This team doesn’t even sniff the ECF without him and they’d be getting swept worse than any team in Finals history if not for his efforts.

There’s been a lot of talk about how he’s not good enough to be the number 2 on a title team and at this point it’s just absurd. He’s helped make these games somewhat competitive despite a severely hobbled Jimmy, cold shooters, and no Herro.

Also for all the talk about his size, his incredible work on the offensive boards against way bigger teams has been essential to winning this team games. Even against Jokic, he’s created a ton of extra shots for Miami.

He’s far from perfect but I truly do not know how people can watch him and say that he’s holding this team back in any way. Untrained eye, I guess

EDIT:

I see it all over this subreddit but a lot of folks conflate “scoring” with “offense” and it’s incredibly reductive. Bam’s by all measures an exceptional offensive player and has been the core cog in everything they’ve done as an offense since like 2019. He’s by many measures the most effective screener in the NBA and is one of the best playmaking centers in the league this side of Jokic. He’s also an efficient 20 ppg scorer and has improved in that area every year he’s been in the league. This idea that he’s disappointing or done growing as a scorer is kinda ludicrous and the idea that his offensive contribution can be measured in scoring totals is even more ludicrous.