The Miami Heat could have Bam Adebayo back for Game 4 of the NBA Finals as they look to level the series against the Los Angeles Lakers.
Adebayo missed Game 2 and Game 3 after suffering a neck strain in the series opener but he was upgraded to questionable when the Heat released their injury report on Monday afternoon and could feature on Tuesday night.
Here's all you need to know ahead of Game 4.
- Tip off time—Game 4 of the NBA Finals begins at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, October 6 at the AdventHealth Arena at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida.
- TV channel—ABC.
- Live stream—ABC's digital platforms, the ABC Sports website, watchESPN, YouTube TV and fuboTV and SlingTV.
- Odds—The Lakers are 7.5-point favorites with FanDuel and William Hill and are 9/10 to cover the spread, while the Heat are 51/20 underdogs and the over/under line for total points scored is set at 218.5.
In a 2-0 hole without two of their best players after Bam Adebayo injured his neck in Game 1 and Goran Dragic suffered a torn plantar fascia in the first half of the opening game of the series, the Heat avoided a sweep in Game 3, winning 115-104 on the back of a monumental performance from Jimmy Butler.
With his team's back firmly up against the wall, Butler took matters into his own hands and delivered only the third 40-point triple-double in NBA Finals history.
Butler finished with 40 points, 11 rebounds and 13 assists, shooting 14-of-20 from the field in 45 minutes on the court.
"This is what he wanted, this is what we wanted," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after the game. "It's really hard to analyze or describe Jimmy until you actually feel him between the four lines. He's a supreme, elite competitor and we needed it."
Only four teams have ever come back from 2-0 down to win the NBA Finals—Miami, incidentally, achieved the feat in 2006 en route to its first title—and the chips remain firmly stacked against the Heat, particularly should Dragic and Adebayo not feature on Tuesday night.
While the latter has been upgraded to questionable, the former—behind Butler, the Heat's leading scorer in the playoffs with 19.9 points per game—remains doubtful.
"Until the series is completed, I kind of stay on edge, stay locked in on the job at hand," he told the media on Monday, as per ESPN.
"Obviously, no one wants to ever lose. You hate that feeling, especially when you know you didn't play your best, and I definitely wasn't at my best [Sunday] night from an individual standpoint. So I take that responsibility, and I take that with a lot of passion and understanding of how I can be much better in the following game.
"Throughout the postseason, I stay even-keel. As I've grown in this game and I've grown over the years, I kind of stay even-keel, understanding that there's always another opportunity to get better."
In his previous nine NBA Finals appearances, LeBron James has experienced pretty much every possible scenario. He was swept twice, played a crucial role in the first and so far only comeback from 3-1 down in the history of the Finals, lost the series opener to win the series in five games and saw his team threw away a 2-1 lead. It is therefore not surprising to see James not panicking despite the loss in Game 3.
James top scored for the Lakers in Game 3, finishing with 25 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. However, James and Anthony Davis had 13 turnovers between them, one more than the entire Heat roster combined.
After two stellar performances in the first two games of the series, Miami limited Davis to 15 points—his lowest tally since Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals last month—five rebounds and three assists in Game 3.
