SoFla Guide Editors
Giannis Antetokounmpo turned a Wednesday night preseason game at Kaseya Center into a highlight reel, and the Heat rolled past the Brooklyn Nets 144-128 on October 14, according to Yahoo Sports and the Miami Herald. He did it without his frontcourt partner, too. Bam Adebayo sat this one out with right groin tightness, per ESPN and The Athletic’s Eric Nehm, which means the full version of this Miami team is still waiting in the wings.
Giannis did a little bit of everything
Here is the line, courtesy of ESPN: 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting, 15 rebounds, nine assists, one steal and three blocks in 23 minutes. He went 0-of-2 from three and 4-of-9 from the free throw line, so it was not spotless, but the rest of the sheet was stuffed in a way that made the misses feel like footnotes.
The scoreboard told the same story. Yahoo Sports and the Miami Herald reported the Heat outscored the Nets by 15 points while Antetokounmpo was on the floor. When your best player is on the court and the margin swings that hard in a preseason game, the regular season starts to feel a lot closer.
Erik Spoelstra sounded like a fan with a very good seat. “I’m probably like everybody else that’s watching this and you can witness that level of greatness,” the Heat coach said, via Yahoo Sports and the Miami Herald. He added, “We’re just very grateful to have him on our side in a Miami Heat uniform.”
There was one moment that made the building hold its breath. Antetokounmpo tumbled hard to the court in the second quarter after a failed dunk attempt while being fouled by Moe Wagner, according to Yahoo Sports and the Miami Herald. BasketballNews.com reportedly framed it as an “injury scare” in a headline, but Yahoo Sports and the Herald noted he emerged from the game unscathed, and no established outlet reported a formal injury designation for him. So exhale, Miami.
Spoelstra was not handing out gold stars for everything, though. “Our pick-and-roll defense in the first half was really bad,” he said, via Yahoo Sports and the Miami Herald. Even a 144-point night comes with a to-do list in this organization.
The Bam-shaped hole
Adebayo’s absence was the asterisk on the whole evening. ESPN and The Athletic’s Eric Nehm reported he missed the game because of right groin tightness. That is a different issue from the one Heat fans might remember from last fall, when Adebayo exited a preseason game against the Atlanta Hawks with a right knee contusion. That was last preseason. This is the 2026-27 preseason cycle, a new season and a new, separate ailment.
With Bam out, Nick Richards got the spot start at center, according to Yahoo Sports and the Miami Herald. Miami won by 16 anyway, which says something about the roster Spoelstra has been talking up all camp.
“We have so much depth, and we want to utilize that depth over the course of 82 games,” Spoelstra said before the game, via Local 10/WPLG.
That depth did not come from nowhere. Antetokounmpo arrived from the Milwaukee Bucks in a July 6 blockbuster that also brought Bobby Portis to Miami, and the Heat added veteran guard Klay Thompson in August, joining forward Andrew Wiggins, who was already on the roster after coming over in the Jimmy Butler trade during the 2024-25 season. The group that beat Brooklyn on Wednesday was already a loaded one. The version with Adebayo back in the lineup next to Antetokounmpo is the one everyone in South Florida actually wants to see.
What’s next
Wednesday was the Heat’s fourth preseason game and their home preseason finale. Miami came in at 2-1 and walked out 3-1. Local 10/WPLG carried the broadcast, with tipoff scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET.
The real thing arrives soon. The Heat open the 2026-27 regular season on October 21 against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Kaseya Center. That gives Adebayo’s groin a week to settle down and gives the rest of us a week to figure out what to call a Giannis-and-Bam frontcourt.
For now, the takeaway is simple. The Heat played a preseason game without one of their cornerstones, dropped 144 points, and watched their new superstar fill up every column on the box score in 23 minutes. If the first half pick-and-roll defense gets cleaned up and Adebayo is back in a Heat uniform on the 21st, Spoelstra will have the problem every coach wants: too many good options.
Miami, you might want to keep that TV remote handy.
