“Ayo coach Spo! Get this man off the floor already!”: Joel Embiid pointing to Miami Heat bench telling Bam Adebayo where to sit leaves NBA Twitter in splits

From a DPOY candidate to having the worst +/- on the floor, Bam Adebayo is having a nightmare of a Playoff, and Joel Embiid is responsible for most of it.

Bam Adebayo in this year’s regular-season had the strongest case for being the best overall defender in the league. Maybe the only thing that kept him from winning the Defensive Player of the Year award was his lack of games played in the season.

Since coming back to action in January the Miami Heat big man had played every single game for Erik Spoelstra’s side except for the last game before the start of the Playoffs and so it was expected of him to lead the defense.

But since the Playoffs started the man hasn’t been as consistent on either end of the floor as he was in the regular season. More particularly, he’s switching off on defense in several plays of the game in a way that would not make sense if you watch him locking up the league’s best players in the very same game.

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NBA Twitter ramps down Heat’s DPOY candidate Bam Adebayo as Joel Embiid bullies him for the second game in a row

To lay the facts plain and simple, Adebayo was averaging over 19-points, 10-rebounds, 3.4 assists, 1.4 steals, and almost a block per game in 56 regular-season games he played this season. While he’s averaging under 15.5 points, 8 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.1 steals, and less than half a block per game in the 9 Playoffs game thus far.

His overall plus-minus though has gone up from +5.4 in the regular season to a +7.1 in the playoffs. He had an average +/- of +20.5 before Joel Embiid of the 76ers came back to a 2-0 series led by the Heat.

And since then, it’s like he isn’t Bam Adebayo at all. He had a poor Game 3 with a 9-3-1 stat line and was a game low -22 while proving to be of no use in a 99-79 loss. While in Game 4 he was better offensively, he kept switching on and off on Embiid like a flickering light bulb and allowed him to have a 24-11-2 game.

It looked like Embiid pointed towards the bench telling the Heat big man where to sit after he drew the and-1 giving Bam his 4th foul. And NBA Twitter got on Bam’s back for a poor show against the Sixers big man in both the games.

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