What was expected to be one of Tuesday night’s most uninteresting games turned into maybe the most shocking game of the season.
Bam Adebayo went nuclear — scoring 30 points in the first quarter to quickly eclipse a new career high 43 points in the first half after 19 minutes. Adebayo didn’t stop there, as he kept wailing away at the scoreboard to overtake Lebron James’ Heat franchise record with 63 points. A’ja Wilson, a record-breaker in her own right (tied for the highest scoring game in the WNBA), cheered her boyfriend from the sidelines as he slowly crawled up the historic leaderboard.
The Heat were all but assured a win by the 4th quarter, up 148-121 with one minute and 37 seconds left on the clock. After missing a free throw on purpose, the Heat’s bench wouldn’t give up on Adebayo surpassing Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game record, fouling intentionally to give Adebayo another opportunity to make history.
Adebayo would be sent to the line to knock down both free throws and set the NBA’s newest 2nd highest scoring game with 83 points.
Adebayo last night went 20 for 43 from the field, shot 7 of 22 on 3-pointers, and a league record shattering 36 free throws out of another record 43 attempts. Bam nearly played 42 minutes of basketball to achieve this, well after the game was over with their huge lead.
Coach Spoelstra even challenged a call up 25 points to try to give Adebayo 2 more free throws when he infamously hates challenging.’
In his postgame press interviews, Adebayo talks about what the late great Kobe Bryant would’ve probably said about passing his 81 point record.
Many fans and players are congratulating Adebayo for his achievement, but others are criticizing the performance and calling it shameful in many ways.
Some point to the amount of free throws he took during the game, and how it could be deemed as “foul baiting” or how it’s “disrespectful to Kobe” for not keeping his record as 2nd on the leaderboard. More than that, fans are upset how Bam did it. Fouling purposely in a game where you don’t need to win, challenging meaningless calls, or refusing to pass the ball when triple-teamed are what fans are calling “unethical.”
Many would argue that records are meant to be broken, but was this a great moment in history, or a disrespectful challenge to a legend?