Both Bam Adebayo and Haywood Highsmith got significant comments about the Miami Heat’s historic foul shot attempts in the opener of the 2023 NBA Finals.
Throughout the course of the 48-minute play of the Game 1 of the Finals, the entire Heat team only managed to land twice in the line, which came all from Highsmith. This heavily contrasts the Denver Nuggets’ 18 total trips to the charity stripe with 16 makes.
“I didn’t even realize we took two free throws only and it was only my two free throws so that was pretty interesting,” said Highsmith. “I think we were aggressive, but we did shoot a lot of jump shot because we were open.
“But it’s kind of weird having two free throws out. I’ve never seen that before.”
The Heat averaged 21.0 free throw attempts throughout 18 games this playoffs, but their numbers suddenly crashed this Thursday night as the Nuggets dominated them for the first blood win.
Per ESPN Stats & Info, Miami’s two total foul shots is the fewest in a playoff game in NBA history.
“We made history… We got in the locker room and seeing the stat sheet, I feel like we were all shocked that we only had two free throws,” Adebayo stated.
“But we gonna watch film tomorrow, get our minds wrapped around it and I feel like we’ll shoot more in Game 2.”
When noted that they seemed not complaining amid the free throw discrepancy, Adebayo further delivered key words about Miami’s scoring ways and the officiating.
“If I do say something, will you take the fine?,” Adebayo told the reporter.
“Like I said, I just feel like we can’t even get into that. We can’t let them dictate the game. I just felt like we took a lot of jump shots and we missed a lot of them, instead of getting to the basket.
“Like I said, we’re gonna watch film and get back to the drawing board.”
