Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo scored 83 points Tuesday night, the second most in an NBA game in history, surpassing Kobe Bryant\u2019s 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\u2019s big night was felonious. Tuesday\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s previous franchise record. Now a Laker, LeBron cheered the effort on X, writing: \u201cBAM BAM BAM\u201d with a bunch of fire emojis.<\/p>\n
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Lakers fans were not as fired up, but they were hot, booing when news of Adebayo\u2019s 83 points was delivered inside Crypto.com Arena before the Lakers\u2019 120-106 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves. \u201cHonestly, it hurts,\u201d said Los Angeles\u2019 Erik Ortiz, who was 6 years old when Bryant had his 81-point night. \u201cAnd it\u2019s kind of messed up. All those free throws? No disrespect, but it didn\u2019t feel earned.\u201d \u201cA disrespect to the game,\u201d said Robert Horry, who played with Bryant in L.A. for seven seasons. \u201cTo me, don\u2019t cheat the game. If you\u2019re gonna play like that, that\u2019s cheating the game.\u201d \u201cBut,\u201d Horry added, diplomatically, \u201cscoring 83 points is still hard regardless if you cheat the game or not.\u201d JJ Redick offered his most diplomatic two cents: \u201cIt\u2019s incredible what he was able to do.\u201d The Lakers\u2019 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). \u201cI said to my coaching staff, \u2018Ah, the Heat are rolling.\u2019 And they kind of looked at each other and they were like, \u2018Are you kidding right now? No, Bam has 77!\u2019 I watched the last three minutes and \u2026 that was a different type of basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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\u2019ve taken the baton from his basketball hero while playing regular old basketball. Lakers fans know ball; they wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019s magic, and then there are magic tricks, manufactured illusions, sleight-of-hand acts of pseudo-sorcery. That\u2019s how we should remember Adebayo\u2019s 83. That\u2019s how we should explain that game to our children and grandchildren. It isn\u2019t as though Kobe\u2019s 81-point output wasn\u2019t going to be eclipsed. It was only a matter of time, especially considering the offensive emphasis in today\u2019s NBA.<\/p>\n
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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 \u201ccaught up in the moment like everyone else, and I didn\u2019t want to get in the way.\u201d Late Lakers owner Jerry Buss once described Kobe\u2019s 81-point \u201clike watching a miracle.\u201d Adebayo\u2019s output felt more mechanical than ethereal. Artificial and impure, and achieved by doing something only slightly resembling basketball. Lakers fans were right: Boo.<\/p>\n
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Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo scored 83 points Tuesday night, the second most in an NBA game in history, surpassing Kobe Bryant\u2019s iconic 81 points two decades… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":162979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"yoast_head":"\n