Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo scored 83 points Tuesday night, the second most in an NBA game in history, surpassing Kobe Bryant’s iconic 81 points two decades ago. Congrats to Adebayo, I guess. The way it went down was highly questionable. Nothing romantic or real about it. We thought flopping and foul-baiting made for unethical hoops, but those are but basketball misdemeanors; Adebayo’s big night was felonious. Tuesday’s game featured intentional clock-stopping, game-extending fouls by the Heat. And it was ripe with free-throw-abetting fouls by the Washington Wizards, an actively tanking team that got itself blown out, 150-129. So, no. Bryant’s necessary, organic 81 this was not. The Lakers trailed that game against the Toronto Raptors on Jan. 22, 2006, at halftime and actually needed Kobe’s 55 second-half points to pull away for the win. The Heat were up by as many as 28 points in the fourth quarter with Adebayo continuing to play pop-a-shot in the historic farce – which also moved him past LeBron James, whose 61 points in 2014 stood as Miami’s previous franchise record. Now a Laker, LeBron cheered the effort on X, writing: “BAM BAM BAM” with a bunch of fire emojis.

Lakers fans were not as fired up, but they were hot, booing when news of Adebayo’s 83 points was delivered inside Crypto.com Arena before the Lakers’ 120-106 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves. “Honestly, it hurts,” said Los Angeles’ Erik Ortiz, who was 6 years old when Bryant had his 81-point night. “And it’s kind of messed up. All those free throws? No disrespect, but it didn’t feel earned.” “A disrespect to the game,” said Robert Horry, who played with Bryant in L.A. for seven seasons. “To me, don’t cheat the game. If you’re gonna play like that, that’s cheating the game.” “But,” Horry added, diplomatically, “scoring 83 points is still hard regardless if you cheat the game or not.” JJ Redick offered his most diplomatic two cents: “It’s incredible what he was able to do.” The Lakers’ coach described walking in and seeing the Heat leading with three minutes left, on the verge of winning their sixth consecutive game and Adebayo on the free-throw line (naturally). “I said to my coaching staff, ‘Ah, the Heat are rolling.’ And they kind of looked at each other and they were like, ‘Are you kidding right now? No, Bam has 77!’ I watched the last three minutes and … that was a different type of basketball.”

Adebayo scored 31 points in the first quarter, 12 in the second and 19 in the third – a legitimately impressive career-high 62 points, and in just three quarters. Precisely the same number of points that Kobe had after three quarters when coach Phil Jackson pulled him from a blowout win against Dallas a few weeks before he dropped 81. But on Tuesday, Adebayo kept going, for no reason but to pad his points tally in pursuit of Kobe. If only Adebayo, well respected by peers and fans alike, could’ve taken the baton from his basketball hero while playing regular old basketball. Lakers fans know ball; they wouldn’t have held it against him, they would have saluted. But Adebayo shot 3 for 8 from the field in the final quarter, including 1 for 6 from 3-point range. And he went 14 for 16 at the line in the final quarter, bringing his shooting total to a historic 36 for 43 from the charity stripe, so aptly named for this game. There’s magic, and then there are magic tricks, manufactured illusions, sleight-of-hand acts of pseudo-sorcery. That’s how we should remember Adebayo’s 83. That’s how we should explain that game to our children and grandchildren. It isn’t as though Kobe’s 81-point output wasn’t going to be eclipsed. It was only a matter of time, especially considering the offensive emphasis in today’s NBA.

In 2024, then-Maverick Luka Doncic scored 73 points in a 148-143 win against the Atlanta Hawks. But Doncic went just 15 of 16 from the free-throw line that night, and 25 for 33 from the field, including 8 of 13 from behind the arc. Or imagine, going forward, what 7-foot-4 center Victor Wembanyama could be capable of if the San Antonio Spurs force-feed him offensively for a full game. But records are made to be broken, not stolen. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told reporters he was “caught up in the moment like everyone else, and I didn’t want to get in the way.” Late Lakers owner Jerry Buss once described Kobe’s 81-point “like watching a miracle.” Adebayo’s output felt more mechanical than ethereal. Artificial and impure, and achieved by doing something only slightly resembling basketball. Lakers fans were right: Boo.