Bam Adebayo had more than one reason to smile Sunday in Miami. At his youth camp, the Heat big man was presented with the NBA’s Social Justice Champion award for the 2025/26 season, and he also took a moment to talk about what’s ahead for a reshaped roster and a tougher Eastern Conference.
After receiving the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar trophy, Adebayo said he’s eager for the season to get going, even with the East looking loaded.
“ It’s going to be great competition,” Adebayo said. “ And that’s what we look for.
That’s what brings the best out of players. We have great competition.
So I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be a fun season.”
Miami enters the year with only 12 players on standard contracts, the fewest in the NBA, and Adebayo said he’s interested to see how the team fills out the rest of the roster. Still, he’s not worried about the numbers on paper.
“ We’ll figure it out,” he said. “ We don’t really worry about the outside noise too much. We’ve done a lot more with less.”
Adebayo also knows his role as a leader will look a little different now that Miami has replaced several younger players with veterans such as Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bobby Portis and Tim Hardaway Jr. That shift, he said, should make some things easier.
“ The thing about leadership is when you want to impact somebody, you meet them in the middle,” Adebayo said. “ So obviously I’m going to meet guys where they are and we’ll go from there.
Obviously it is different because you’re going from trying to teach somebody the game of basketball in the NBA terms, and now you’ve got vets who’ve been around in the league. So I feel like it’ll be easier conversations, I feel like we’ll get to the points a lot quicker.”
He also expects point guard Davion Mitchell to have a “great season” after losing weight this offseason.
Elsewhere on the roster, Simone Fontecchio said he turned down more lucrative offers this summer because he wanted to stay in Miami. In an interview with Lia Capizzi of Italian outlet Domani, Fontecchio said, “ My priority was to continue my NBA career,” Fontecchio said, per Dario Skerletic of Sportando.
“ (President) Pat Riley told me he wanted me to stay, and then coach Erik Spoelstra made it clear that he really wanted to keep me. I’ve always felt their trust, even when I fell out of the rotation.”
Fontecchio said he believes he can be a useful “complementary player” next to Antetokounmpo, and he’s also looking ahead to joining the Italian national team before the August qualifying window for the 2027 FIBA World Cup.
And in a mailbag, Winderman noted that Nikola Jovic needs a bounce-back season if he’s going to become a meaningful trade asset.
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