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Bam Adebayo is not mincing words about his historic 83-point game — and the backlash that came with it.
“First of all, y’all are blaming me. You should be blaming their head coach,” said the Miami Heat star in a Thursday, March 12, press conference. “Get that first. I was not the one that let me go one-on-one the whole game until I had 70 then you send the double [team]. At that point, I had 70 with like nine minutes to go in the game. You think I’m not going for it?”
He continued, “And that’s the thing that’s crazy when they talk about the ‘unethical’ part of basketball. If I have 70 with nine minutes to go, who would be like, ‘You know coach, just take me out.’ Yeah right. Anybody in my shoes with nine minutes left? Okay. A minute, alright. Nine? Yeah I’m going for it.”
Adebayo etched his name in the history books with the impressive outing during a 150-129 blowout over the Washington Wizards on Tuesday, March 10, at Kaseya Center in Miami.
The points total surpassed the legendary Kobe Bryant’s 2006 81-point game. Adebayo now holds the second-highest single game points total, behind Wilt Chamberlain’s famous 100 point game in 1962.
“You can’t be mad at that,” Adebayo said. “If you are mad, I don’t care because a lot of people are upset because if they did play they never got a chance to get that close to chasing greatness. And if you get that close to chasing greatness, that’s the point of chasing it, so you can surpass it.”
The backlash came from the apparent stats padding at the end of the blowout game as Adebayo and the Heat were seemingly singularly focused on helping Adebayo break the record.
Bam Adebayo celebrates during the fourth quarter of the game against the Washington Wizards at Kaseya Center on March 10 Megan Briggs/Getty Images
With the Heat ahead by 25 points in the fourth quarter — and Adebayo already sitting at 77 points — Miami coach Erik Spoelstra decided to keep him in the game. The Wizards were double teaming Adebayo for much of the time down the stretch, sometimes even putting three or four defenders on him.
By the end of the night, Adebayo had attempted 43 free throws, making 36 of them, both NBA records.
“And they’re going to talk about the free throws,” Adebayo said. “It’s not like I shoot 15 free throws a game. It’s not like I average 10 free throws a game. You can watch the film, I was legitimately getting fouled every time, so I went to the free throw line.”
Wizards head coach Brian Keefe called the fourth quarter of the game “not real basketball,” arguing that the Heat left Adebayo in the game for the sole purpose of beating Bryant’s record.
“They kept him in the game, and there were a lot of foul calls — 16 free throws in the fourth quarter,” Keefe said. “[We were] just trying to take the ball out of his hands.”
Keefe isn’t alone in those sentiments. CBS Sports’ Jack Maloney called the performance an “affront to the game.” Meanwhile, The Athletic’s Sam Amick reported that he spoke with “some of the people from [Kobe] Bryant’s past” who were unhappy with the way the game went down.
Spoelstra, on the other hand, seems to have no regrets with how he handled the situation.
“I apologize to absolutely no one, period,” Spoelstra said.
