As the drama continues with the Miami Heat and Jimmy Butler, everybody else on the team still has a season in front of them to worry about as emphasized by Bam Adebayo. While the Heat star's playing status is up in the air for Wednesday night, he spoke to Marc J. Spears of AndScape.
Now more than ever, there needs to be a locker room leader for Miami as the outside noise is getting louder and louder by the day with the immense amount of speculation around Butler. Adebayo is just the person to do that as he spoke about not wanting the season to go to nothing, though he said it in an NSFW response.
“Everybody needs somebody to look at,” Adebayo said. “They need that voice, that one voice where we get in the trenches and it gets dark. People lose direction. You need somebody to be that enforcer to understand that we can still win. We still have enough.”
“We can’t let this season go to s— for the young guys,” Adebayo continued. “I look at ’em because young guys are trying to get a job. Guys are trying to be something in this league and it’s like you can’t let the outside noise distract that. But for me, it’s really getting everybody at the same page and understand that we can still win.”
Heat's Bam Adebayo calls Jimmy Butler “one of my guys”

The fractured relationship between the Heat and Butler has consisted of a lack of commitment and contract disputes which Adebayo said that the team knows that it's “his business.” The Heat's captain Adebayo would call Butler “one of my guys,” but makes sure to mention how the team needs to “worry about getting these wins.”
“You understand that his business at the end of the day, and I’ll leave it at that,” Adebayo said. “J.B. [Butler] is one of my guys. So, for me, we give him space and we let him and management handle it, get involved in that. We worry about getting these wins because at the end of the day, whatever happens with him and the management, somebody still got to play these games.
“You still got to go out there and win,” Adebayo continued. “That’s the best thing for us to get our mind off of that situation. Go out here and get some wins.”
At any rate, the team is 20-18 which puts them seventh in the Eastern Conference as the Heat faces the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday night to finish the West Coast six-game road trip. Butler is eligible to come back from his suspension on Jan. 17 when Miami hosts the Denver Nuggets.