MIAMI (AP) — Bam Adebayo's sneakers were trimmed in gold. Fitting, given what the night was about. Adebayo, Miami coach Erik Spoelstra and Heat forward Nikola Jovic were honored Monday night for their Olympic medal accomplishments at the Paris Games.
Adebayo got another banner in the rafters by winning Olympic gold as a member of the Heat, joining the one from the Tokyo Games that were played in 2021. Spoelstra was an assistant coach on the U.S.
team in Paris, and Jovic won a bronze medal with Serbia. The banner with Adebayo's name and the U.S.
flag was unveiled during a halftime ceremony of the Heat game against the Sacramento Kings. He stood with his mother, Marilyn Blount; she wore his gold medal from Tokyo around her neck and draped the gold medal from Paris around his as the brief ceremony started. “Keep tallying them up," said Adebayo, Miami's captain and the first player to win two Olympic gold medals while playing for the Heat.
"Obviously, it's something special. It keeps marking my name in the history books.” Adebayo averaged 6.
0 points and 3.7 rebounds in the six Olympic games for the Americans, who went undefeated in the tournament, rallied past Serbia in the semifinals and then held off host France to win a fifth consecutive gold medal with a late-game 3-point barrage by Stephen Curry serving as the capper. “A couple days ago I was looking at some of the pictures from the trip,” said Spoelstra, who was part of the U.
S. Olympic delegation as an assistant .
