History in the Making: Bam Adebayo Drops 83 Points
On Tuesday, March 10th, the Miami Heat played against the Washington Wizards. At first glance, there was no excitement for this game, as the Heat is a “mediocre” team and statistically, the Wizards are the worst team in the entire league. However, to the surprise of many fans of the sport, history was made that night.
That night, center Bam Adebayo scored 83 points, which sets the record for the second most points scored in a single game, just behind Wilt Chamberlain who scored 100. This is an accomplishment that will go down in history forever. Whenever someone looks at the top NBA scoring performances ever, they will see Bam’s name.
With this outstanding performance, you would think that everyone would be congratulating and celebrating Bam Adebayo. Scoring 80+ is something that only two other players have done, Kobe Bryant and Wilt Chamberlain. However, people believe that his game wasn’t an “ethical” 80+ points.
“This performance made him one of the best Miami Heat players ever, but at the same time he was playing the Wizards and had 40+ free throws. I respect him for scoring 83 though, but I don’t think it was an ethical 80 points like it was for Kobe.” said junior Johnny Tarver.
These are the two main arguments for why Bam’s 83 isn’t ethical. One, he played the Wizards, which is the worst team in the league record wise. And two, he had 43 free throw attempts, the most ever in NBA history, so technically, Bam broke two records that night;
However, this argument is very flawed. Yes the Wizards are a bad team, but 83 points is 83 points. If it was that easy to do it against a bad team like the Wizards, why has it only happened three times? The truth is that no matter how bad a team is, it would still be challenging to score 83 points.
And as for the free throw attempts, he got fouled to get rewarded those free throws. It’s not like the referees were just favoring him, anyone who actually watched the game can tell you that the Wizards started fouling him out of fear that he’ll score 80+.
“In the first half, he showed dominance with 43, he was playing like Kobe out there, but in the second half after they just started fouling him it became a little boring. It was still an amazing performance.” said sophomore James Patrick from American Senior High.
And this is the right way to view this memorable performance. It was something memorable, but not the most exciting to watch. Obviously watching someone score basically half of their points off free throws isn’t “exciting” like Kobe making all of his jumpshots, but it is still something that should be respected.
As for what this means for the Miami Heat, it only strengthens the resume of this franchise. Three championships, multiple hall of fame players including one of the greatest to ever play in Lebron James, and now, one of their players scored the second most points ever in NBA history.
This performance can also be used as a source of momentum for this Miami Heat team, as this is written, the Heat are on a 6 game winning streak and only a couple of games away from the 6th seed, meaning they could possibly avoid the play-in for the first time since 2022. Maybe these 83 points from Bam can mark the start of a deep playoff push for this Heat team, only time will tell.
