Bam Adebayo knows that his 83-point performance has not been universally celebrated. Unsurprisingly, the Miami Heat big man doesn’t think there’s much merit to the criticism he’s received for stat-chasing.
After the Heat’s 112-105 win against the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday, Adebayo told reporters that angry “couch coaches” should direct their ire toward Washington Wizards coach Brian Keefe. If Washington didn’t want him to make history, it could have gotten the ball out of his hands at some point in the first three quarters.
“First of all, y’all are blaming me,” Adebayo said. “You should be blaming their head coach. Get that first. I was not the one letting me go one-on-one the whole game until I had 70 and then you started to send a double.”
Adebayo continued: “At that point, I got 70 with, like, what, nine minutes left to go in the game? You think I’m not going for it? And that’s the thing that’s crazy when they talk about the ‘unethical’ part of the basketball. I’m like, if I have 70 with nine minutes to go, who would just be like, ‘You know, Coach, just take me out.’ Yeah, right. Anybody in my shoes with nine minutes left? OK, a minute, alright. Nine? Yeah, I’m going for it. You can’t be mad at that. If you are mad, I don’t care.”
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With 9:05 left in the fourth quarter of Miami’s 150-129 win against the Wizards on Tuesday, Adebayo scored his 70th point at the free-throw line, giving his team a 22-point lead. It was clear at that point that he had shot to top Kobe Bryant’s 81-point performance and hit No. 2 on the single-game scoring list.
“A lot of people, they’re upset because, if they did play, they never had a chance to get that close to chasing greatness,” Adebayo said. “And then if you get that close to chasing greatness, that’s the point of chasing it. So you can surpass it. And some of the people have never played basketball. So, like, if you’ve been in the backyard and you and a couple of your homies have been playing 21 and you got 19, you’re not going to get an easy look off.”
En route to 83, Adebayo shot 36 for 43 from the foul line, including 14 for 16 in the fourth quarter. He dismissed the notion that this makes his accomplishment less legitimate.
“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.”
He said that the previous 48 hours had been an “emotional rollercoaster,” and that it was not easy to “flip the page” and move on to the next game. “It’s still a pinch-me moment,” he said, and the game itself was exhausting.
“Like Kobe said, you gotta be in shape, you gotta have great endurance and be in shape to really catch that,” Adebayo said. “And I understand it now ’cause the next game is the one you gotta worry about.”
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Going into the game against the Bucks, he said, he was “surrounded with the eyes because everybody wants to see if you can do it again, which is crazy ’cause I don’t think anybody will ever do it again.” Adebayo was not particularly efficient against Milwaukee, finishing with 21 points on 6-for-20 shooting in 35 minutes.
“It wasn’t 83 tonight, it was 21,” he said. “If anybody’s upset, I don’t care. But we got the W, so that’s all that matters.”
Adebayo said that, as time went by, what he did on Tuesday was sinking in more and more. “I’m kind of in awe of myself,” he said, adding that having his name after Wilt Chamberlain’s and before Bryant’s “sounds insane, but it actually happened.” As for the heat he has taken, he’s not exactly surprised, but, just like his coach, he’s unbothered by it.
“I knew it’s a two-way street,” Adebayo said. “Some people are going to praise you ’cause they’re going to be like ’83 is 83 no matter how you get it.’ And it’s other people that’s going to say, ‘Well, it wasn’t the way Kobe did it.’ And you start throwing that around and I’m like, ‘Listen, I’m a Kobe fan, I got close to his record. What do you think I’m going to do? Try to break it.’ I’m pretty sure, if I had 81 and Kobe was on his way, he was not being like, ‘You know what, I’m going to check myself out with nine minutes left and I got 70.’ Be serious.”
