The pettiness displayed by Bam Adebayo after Wednesday night’s victory over sidelined Jimmy Butler and the Golden State Warriors?
“I’m not that petty,” Adebayo said.
Instead, the Heat center said Friday, a suggestion by his stylist.
OK, then.
No sooner had the Heat finished off the Warriors, mere moments after Butler turned his back on his former teammates and retreated directly to the tunnel leading to Golden State locker room at Kaseya Center, Adebayo donned a baseball cap in the Heat locker room that read simply, “Joy Dealer.”
“My stylist,” Adebayo explained at United Center ahead of Friday night’s game against the Chicago Bulls, “when I put the outfit on, I called my staff, I said like bro, I feel like I’m missing something. And he’s like, ‘Let me see your hats.’ And it was just the fact that it went with my outfit.”
So pure coincidence that the design element also was punctuated by the word that led to Butler’s departure last season, when the All-Star forward said he had lost his joy playing with the Heat?
“It just so happened that we were playing the Warriors,” Adebayo said. “But nothing more than that.”
Adebayo did acknowledge that if the hat happenstance had involved his girlfriend, WNBA star A’ja Wilson, that much more thinking might have gone into the process.
“I’m not that petty,” he said, having worn the cap backward during his postgame interview Wednesday night. “I’m not like my significant other. She’s more petty than I am. I’m not that petty.”
Joy Dealer is an apparel brand and “community empowerment initiative” founded by Adebayo’s publicist company, OnDecker. According to the company’s Instagram account, it is “a group dedicated to community empowerment through shared meals, uplifting conversations, & acts of service.”
Bam got the last laugh
Can buy that hat here: https://t.co/IKxczmA5FP pic.twitter.com/LRAJRFoioR
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) November 20, 2025
“The biggest thing we try to do,” Adebayo said, “the hat says it all. We’re joy dealers. We’re trying to spread joy, trying to inspire the younger generation and impact the older community. So that’s what we can do. You do that by putting smiles on people’s faces.”
And so a totally innocent choice, worn on the same night as Butler’s lone appearance of the season in South Florida?
“Yeah,” Adebayo said, “a hundred percent.”
Injury updates
After the morning shootaround, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra offered updates on the hip injuries that kept forwards Andrew Wiggins and Nikola Jovic home from the two-game trip that concludes Sunday against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Of Wiggins, Spoelstra said: “It just got really tight the latter part of (Wednesday night’s) fourth quarter. He’s day-to-day. He also wasn’t feeling well that whole game. So that might have had an effect a little bit. But overall we’re encouraged by the prognosis on it.”
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Of Jovic, Spoelstra said, “Niko, that’s something that he’s been dealing with a little bit, on and off. So we want to make sure that we’re going to be taking care of it right now.”
Pure competition
With the Eastern Conference standings not only tight but also highly competitive save for the four teams at the bottom of the standings, Spoelstra said it made games such as Friday night’s against the Bulls even more significant.
“Both teams are right there in the standings. So the East is kind of wide open right now,” he said. “We said that at the beginning of the year, that we wanted to be open to the possibilities.
“There’s a little bit of an unknown in the East. And I think there’s a lot of teams that are trying to go for it, which is good for competition, it’s good for the league.”
He said the Heat and the Bulls embody those possibilities.
“There’s some similar styles, similar grittiness on both teams,” he said.
Giving thanks
The Heat’s Adebayo and Tyler Herro on Tuesday will team for a Thanksgiving grocery pop-up in support of underserved Miami families, an event held in collaboration with the Bam, Books & Brotherhood Foundation and the T. Herro Foundation.
At the event at Miami’s Charles Hadley Park, the two will help distribute food in the event presented by Baptist Health.
Included in the event will be distribution of clothing, medical and wellness services, games and activities.
