There are a million and one different factors that will go into how successful the 2025-26 NBA season winds up being for the Miami Heat. None will hold greater importance than getting Bam Adebayo, generally regarded as their best player (and one of the league’s elite defenders), back into his prime form.

It speaks to his top-shelf talent that he averaged 18.1 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 2.0 combined steals and blocks this past season and still had what would be considered a down year. He wasn’t really mentioned in All-Star talks and saw his streak of five consecutive All-Defensive selections unceremoniously snapped.

That said, it also at least partly explains why the Heat never got into a groove last season (with, of course, another huge explanation being Jimmy Butler’s prolonged departure). Miami might function in an egalitarian manner, but it’s truly built to go as far as Adebayo can take this team. That’s why getting him going is so critically important, and that starts with getting him back to a more aggressive play style.

Getting Adebayo back into attack mode will be vital to Miami’s success.

Remember the annual obsession with Adebayo’s ability to expand his offensive range? Well, he showed the most promise on that front to date this past season (career-high 79 triples with a 35.7 percent connection rate) and wound up being as ineffective as he has been in years (18.9 player efficiency rating, his lowest since 2018-19, per Basketball-Reference.com).

While it’d be theoretically helpful to have him demand defensive attention on the outside, this perimeter push took him away from what he does best: wreak havoc around the rim. He is borderline unstoppable from close range (career 72.8 percent within three feet), but he never spent less time on the interior than he did last season (career-low 21.3 percent of his shots came from that range).

It’s one thing to get a player to start dabbling outside of his comfort zone. It’s quite another to pluck them out of the position where they’re most effective.

That shouldn’t need to be the case in Miami. The Heat aren’t overloaded with downhill attackers, and sophomore center Kel’el Ware looks like a viable three-point threat. In other words, having Adebayo around the rim—either on downhill drives or explosive rolls—shouldn’t really clutter things up for anyone else.

The Heat need to get Adebayo back into his attacking form. While he maybe can’t drive and dunk his way to primary-scorer status, he can be the best version of himself: an all-purpose lockdown defender who posts sky-high field-goal percentages as a second or third option.

This should perhaps go without saying, but Miami needs to squeeze everything it can out of Adebayo. No external saviors are on the horizon. The Heat isn’t currently an obvious destination for stars seeking trades, and things don’t look any more promising for future free agency pursuits.

If the Heat are going to surprise this season, they’ll need internal improvements to be the difference. Adebayo has been a full-fledged difference-maker before, and if the Heat can keep him in attack mode more, he can surely reprise that role.