On what seemed like a perfectly normal NBA night, Bam Adebayo woke up and apparently decided he was tired of being known mainly as a great defender and solid All-Star. Instead, the big man for the Miami Heat went absolutely nuclear and dropped 83 points on the Washington Wizards — the second-highest scoring game in NBA history. Yes, you read that right. Eighty-three. That’s not a typo, and no, this wasn’t a video game.
The only person still ahead of him on the all-time list is the legendary Wilt Chamberlain, who scored 100 points back in 1962 — a record that’s been haunting the league like a basketball ghost ever since. But Bam did manage to leapfrog Kobe Bryant’s famous 81-point game from 2006, which had been sitting comfortably in second place for two decades.
The Heat ended up winning the game 150–129, but the real story was Bam turning into a one-man scoring machine. He got going early too, scoring 31 points in the first quarter alone — which is usually the kind of number a team hopes to score collectively. By halftime he already had 43 points, meaning the Wizards probably spent the locker-room break wondering if they could file a missing-defense report.
Adebayo finished the night shooting 20-for-43 from the field, hitting 7 three-pointers, and going to the free-throw line so often it basically became his second home. He made 36 free throws on 43 attempts, setting NBA records for both free throws made and attempted in a single game.
NBA players’ celebratory reactions poured in following the game
“I looked at the stat sheet. It was pretty crazy: 40 shots, 40 free throws, 20 3s. That takes a lot of stamina, man,” Houston Rockets star and Adebayo’s USA Basketball teammate Kevin Durant said. “It takes a lot of energy to go out there and put those shots up and also make them, set a record, surpass Kobe as the second-highest-scoring player in the history of the game. I mean, damn. Congrats to him. Huge, huge accomplishment, something we’re going to be talking about forever.”
But like all historic milestones, you can’t have nice things without somebody hatin’ and there are a lOT of haters. Take Ice Cube’s son O’Shea Jackson Jr.
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra left him in long enough to chase history, and Bam finally hit the magical 83-point mark with a pair of free throws late in the game. The crowd in Miami lost its mind, teammates mobbed him afterward, and the rest of the basketball world collectively checked the box score twice just to make sure it was real.
Source: Megan Briggs / Getty
Bam’s better half, WNBA balled A’ja Wilson, landed the best response to her man’s historic accomplishment via Threads:
“Go ahead and pee in that cup my boi!”
Nobody should be your biggest supporter and biggest roaster than the one you love.
After the game, Adebayo said the moment felt surreal, especially passing the scoring mark of his childhood idol, Kobe Bryant. And honestly, if you had told most NBA fans beforehand that Bam Adebayo would drop 83 points, they would’ve asked what difficulty setting you were playing on in NBA 2K.
But nope — this one actually happened. And now the NBA record books read: Wilt, Bam, then Kobe. Pretty wild company.
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