Miami Heat centre Bam Adebayo racked up a mouth-watering 83 points in a 150-129 victory against the Washington Wizards on March 10, writes Florida News Blitz’s Finn Littlewood.
Adebayo now sits only behind Wilt Chamberlain on the list of highest scorers in a single game, after he scored 100 points in an untelevised game in 1962/1963.
The late Kobe Bryant managed to score 81 in a game in 2006, but most people around the NBA would have told you even that record was impossible to break.
People may try to bring down Bam’s 83 points due to the fact he had a staggering 43 free-throw attempts, breaking the previous record of 39 times at the line in a single game.
Astonishing performance
Unfortunately, the conversation surrounding this astonishing performance may be considered ‘stat-padding’, but nothing should be taken away from what is an all-time game for the American.
The first quarter set the tone for the 28-year-old, as he scored 31 points including five of his seven total three-pointers.
When he reached 43 points by the end of the first half, his team-mates understood the assignment from there and gave him the lion’s share of the ball from then.
Although fatigue set in, he was fortunate to receive some help from the officials as he kept getting foul calls.
In fact, he only made three field goals in the fourth quarter along with 14 made free throws.
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Character
Bam showed his character by also pulling down nine rebounds, a game high, while also making the right play to pass to team-mates on several occasions.
Adebayo has not been having a career-season, yet quietly putting in work for a Heat roster who currently sit in sixth in the NBA Eastern Conference.
A gold medal winner at the Olympics, he has emerged as a strong leader for the Heat over the past few years, and has become one of the more underrated players in the league.
If you asked 1000 fans, ‘if someone was to break Kobe’s 81-point record, who would it be?’, no one would have said Bam Adebayo.
However, perhaps this shows that scoring numbers like this isn’t as difficult as it’s made out to be in the past.
Surely a superstar such as Luka Dončić or Anthony Edwards has a high-scoring game like this in their locker, especially as the Slovenian previously scored 73 in a game.
There’s a lot of records in the NBA that seem unfathomable to be broken, such as this one by Adebayo, but we may see some more in the future.
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