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Has the entire NBA world gone mad?
Bam Adebayo’s remarkable 83 point game against the Washington Wizards on Tuesday night should have been cause for celebration across basketball, at least for people who have any appreciation of its history. Instead, a dizzying amount of fans, content creators and players immediately discredited Adebayo’s performance on the basis of his overly generous shot selection in the fourth quarter, completely forgetting the fact he had an entirely ethical 63 points in the previous three.
The loudest discreditors of Adebayo’s performance were predictably Kobe Bryant fans who were upset to see their hero’s 81-point masterpiece get surpassed. It’s understandable, but it does seem a bit antithetical to Bryant’s own relentless pursuit of historic greatness. If Bryant were still with us today, he almost certainly would have been rooting for Adebayo to clear the bar. And frankly, I’d argue that Bryant’s 81-point game got more positive attention on Tuesday night than it has in years because of the comparisons that Adebayo’s outing drew.
The outrage over Adebayo’s fourth quarter also conveniently ignores the fact that the most iconic scoring performance in league history happened as a result of forced shot taking. While diving into the legitimacy of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game in 1962, everyone’s favorite investigative reporter Pablo Torre found that Darrel Imhoff, who guarded Chamberlain that night, called the performance a farce because of the tactics used to ensure Chamberlain reached the triple digit mark.
Be Like Bam
My take on all of this is that when someone does something as absurd as scoring 60+ points through three quarters, they deserve to shoot whatever shot they want for the rest of the game. Not only that, if the game has already been won (or lost), the entire objective of the fourth quarter should be getting that player as many points as possible. Why? Because it’s fun. It was as fun as it was unbelievable to see Adebayo, a defensive-minded player, register the most unlikely performance in modern American sports history. To give it some perspective, his previous season high output was 32 points and he had 31 in the first quarter alone. I think even Kobe fans were having fun until they realized the 81-point mark was in jeopardy.
I mean, how many other absurd scoring numbers could we have seen from Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and even Kobe had they not been pulled in the third quarter of so many of their historic outbursts? If you’re a fan of a team who subs a player out of the game in the midst of a historic performance, score be damned, you should be disappointed. If anything, Adebayo’s night proved that passing 100 points in a game is attainable.
With any luck, more players will try and aim for that number after seeing what Adebayo did, and we’ll have more chances to run to the internet and bask in the communal experience that naturally occurs when the sports world’s eyes are all on one place.
Giannis Antetokounmpo on Bam Adebayo’s 83 point game:
“It doesn’t matter how you get there. All that matters is that you got it. Like in 30 years from now, nobody’s going to remember how many free throws he shot. I don’t think I remember how many shots Kobe had or how many free… pic.twitter.com/XejycjSKiM
— Ahmed/The Ears/IG: BigBizTheGod 🇸🇴 (@big_business_) March 11, 2026
Take It Easy, Man
When something like an 83-point performance happens in an NBA game, maybe just take it for what it is. The mythology surrounding Kobe’s 81-point game is going nowhere. That night will live on every time we see a player put together a performance that reminds us of it the same way Kobe lives on in a league full of stars who grew up idolizing him.
And for the idea I’ve seen online that said Adebayo should have subbed himself out before he surpassed 81? Enough. The best thing anyone can do to honor Kobe is to go for his records with the same tenacity he went for everyone else’s. And for the active players across the league who had slick comments about how Adebayo got his points, go out and show us what an ethical 83 points looks like in today’s NBA.
