Bam Adebayo’s 83-point game on Tuesday was an aberration considering how the Heat center has played all season. He was averaging under 20 points per game coming in and hadn’t scored more than 31 in a game. Perhaps the sheer shock of it all has caused what can only be described as a mass psychosis event in its wake.
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Rather than celebrating the achievement for its hilariously random yet incredible nature, a not-so-significant number of people out there are giving this the “well, actually” treatment. It’s a bit disheartening to see, honestly. Why do we watch sports, the greatest unscripted entertainment in existence, if not to be surprised and delighted from time to time?
The Hoop Collective is a really great podcast for NBA junkies. However, Tim Bontemps has been the only voice of reason in it when it comes to Bam’s 83. Brian Windhorst and Tim MacMahon have rained on Bam’s parade, and on Tuesday, they welcomed the like-minded Anthony Slater of The Athletic to the show to pooh-pooh it even more.
“To me, it was like a 66-point game masquerading as an 83-point game,” Slater said. “He probably should have been subbed out early [in the] fourth.”
Slater argued that because the Heat had the game well in hand with plenty of time left, Bam should have been taken out. The outcome was decided, he reasoned. Besides, “what if Bam came down on an ankle or something like that?” he wondered.
Slater’s take is kind of wild, for a few reasons. For one, the game was basically in hand before it began. After all, the Wizards are actively trying to lose so that they can have a better chance at someone like AJ Dybantsa or Cameron Boozer in the draft. Their loss to the Heat was their ninth in a row. And they made it 10 when they surprisingly showed a little fight but still lost to the Magic in overtime Thursday night.
The Wizards have a 5-27 record on the road this year. Bam could have enjoyed a night out on South Beach with A’ja Wilson, and the Heat still would have won. So that argument from Slater folds on itself.
Secondly, NBA players are criticized all the time for not playing. Are we now going to blast them for staying in when they’re doing something special?
Worrying about Bam rolling an ankle is really bottom-of-the-barrel content like MCU’s ‘What If.’ It is like when a manager takes a pitcher out before the ninth inning of a perfect game because he’s worried about going over some arbitrary pitch count.
Slater isn’t ready to go to war to declare Bam’s 83-point effort illegitimate. But he did say, “Look, it is what it is, I’m just saying the 83 part of it was a little fake, but if Bam Adebayo scored like 66 points and played three, three-and-a-half quarters, it’s basically what he did do, and that was incredible to me.”
The issue is that while 66 points is amazing, 83 is truly historic. It’s the second-most points in a single game in NBA history. And by doing it, Bam ensured that his name would be near the top of the record book for decades to come. If he had stopped at 66, we wouldn’t still be talking about it.
As Bam approached the record, the Wizards were trying every trick in the book to stop him. They triple-teamed him. They fouled other guys intentionally. They tried to waste the shot clock when they had possession.
Bam chasing history became a randomly great game-within-a-game moment that people will always remember. And no matter what Slater or anyone thinks about how it went down, the fact will always remain that he found a way to do it.
The Heat won, Bam didn’t get hurt, and the Wizards were already embarrassing enough to begin with. Neither Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra nor Bam himself is apologizing for it. So no one else should, either. Sports make us all a little crazy sometimes, but let’s not forget why we watch in the first place.
