Evan Rossman | staff writer

In the eyes of the modern NBA fan, post All-Star break basketball has a tendency to become repetitive and boring. Teams are tanking at a historic rate this season thanks to a loaded draft class coming this summer, and many stars aren’t playing as they save themselves for a potential postseason run, meaning most fans are waiting until the games mean something to tune in. However, on March 10, Miami Heat forward Bam Adebayo gave the world a reason to pay attention to the NBA.

Adebayo scored 83 points in a single game versus the Washington Wizards, the most since Kobe Bryant had his iconic 81-point outing against the Toronto Raptors in January of 2006, and is the closest anyone has come to touching Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game on April 2, 1962. 

Kobe and Wilt’s scoring outbursts only added to their Hall of Fame legacies and were immediately respected by media outlets following their performances, but Bam has faced pressure from the media for the controversy surrounding his free-throw attempts. 

Adebayo took a staggering 43 shots from the line last Tuesday, connecting on 36 of them, both good for NBA records. 16 of his free throws came in the fourth quarter, leading everyone from fans to coaches to media personalities to accusations of stat-padding and discrediting Bam’s achievement as “unethical.”

“They kept him in the game and there were a lot of foul calls,” Wizards Head Coach Brian Keefe said postgame. “In the fourth quarter it turned into not a real basketball game.”

“I was not the one that let me go one-on-one the whole game until I had 70 and then started to send a double,” Adebayo said. “At that point, I had 70 with, what, nine minutes left to go in the game? You think I’m not going for it?”

Former and current NBA players shared Adebayo sentiment — 83 points is 83 points, no matter how he got there. Draymond Green, a future Hall of Famer known for his outspoken nature, shared his thoughts on Bam’s big night with a rant on his podcast, The Draymond Green Show. 

“30 years from now, the record books are going to say Wilt Chamberlain 100 points, and until further notice, Bam Adebayo 83 points,” Green said, “it’s really insane that people are hating. We’ve seen so many people stat-pad in the NBA, but no one stat-padded their way to 83.”

The outrage, and more so, genuine confusion, from NBA diehards is understandable. Kobe and Wilt are both all-time greats who are known for their incredible scoring ability first and foremost. 

For Adebayo, a two-time all-star and career 16 point per game scorer, to outscore Kobe and come the closest to Wilt seems so impossible that it must be downplayed as a fluke and the product of a favorable whistle. However, it can be argued Adebayo’s scoring outburst is no different than Kobe or Wilt’s, as they all followed the same formula — draw fouls and take as many shots as possible.

Chamberlain’s 63 field goal attempts during his 100 point game is still far and away an NBA record, and his 32 free throw attempts were a record before Adebayo. His former teammate, Al Attles, insists that these numbers were forced upon him by other members of the Philadelphia Warriors. 

“Very few people actually know that Wilt tried to come out before he got to 100,” Attles said. “But [Head Coach] Frank McGuire wouldn’t take him out.” 

“His teammates were more excited about it than he was,” Attles said. “When you have a guy who could do what he could do, you’d get the ball to him.”

Chamberlain’s fabled 100 points would have never been possible without some old-fashioned stat-padding with the help of his teammates, so why discredit Adebayo for benefitting from the same thing? Is it because it happened against a putrid Washington Wizards defense? Chamberlain scored 100 against a Knicks defense that allowed nearly 120 points per game, good for bottom three in the NBA at the time. 

As for the free throws, Kobe’s 81 came after he earned 13 attempts at the line in the fourth quarter, not a far shout from Adebayo’s 16 that received criticism for being “unethical”. Do fans downplay Kobe’s foul shots? No, they applaud him for being such a tough cover. 

The unsatisfied reaction to Adebayo’s historic 83 point performance from the NBA community reveals a much larger, underlying issue among basketball fans — negativity. Any record or achievement can be downplayed for a multitude of reasons, whether it’s Bam’s unthinkable 83 point game or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s incredible 20-point game streak, fans need to cherish the greatness on display in the modern NBA.

Evan Rossman can be reached at rossmane@duq.edu