Bam Adebayo has accelerated the timeline on scoring records, and the NBA could not be happier about it.
Adebayo’s 83-point performance, which by this point has been seen, discussed, re-discussed and elaborated on by nearly everyone who uses social media, was a spectacle.
It had NBA personalities such as Kenny Beecham in tears, not from admiration, but from laughter.
Kenny Beecham and Tim McMahon on Bam Adebayo’s 83-Point Performance
“[Bam] ain’t Luka,” said Beecham. “He ain’t Shai. He ain’t Anthony Edwards. Hell, HE NOT EVEN THE TOP SCORER ON HIS OWN TEAM…
“…so this game was just objectively just hilarious, right.”
In contrast to Beecham — who himself was jubilated but also recognized the shamelessness in how Adebayo got all the way to 83 points — prominent ESPN reporters such as Tim McMahon were aghast at the ineptitude they were seeing on the court.
“I get it, Bam’s your guy, he’s got a chance to chase some history,” said McMahon on The Hoop Collective podcast. “But you’re up 20-something, intentionally fouling to extend the game with minutes left. You’re jacking up threes while being triple-teamed.
“It was honestly just awful, hideous, disgusting basketball down the stretch that, I admit, I was cracking up laughing at down the stretch while watching, but I never, ever, ever, ever, ever want to hear about Heat Culture and professionalism and all that again, because that was the most blatant stat-chasing I’ve ever seen.”
The NBA Is Proud of Bam Adebayo
McMahon boldly slanders Adebayo’s performance as “stat-chasing”, and he’s surely right.
But McMahon even admits that, just as Beecham did, he was laughing at the event. Bam’s 83-point performance entertained McMahon — and that’s the ultimate point of basketball.
Maybe some people, specifically players, and especially late-great players such as Kobe Bryant, whose second-all-time record Adebayo broke Tuesday night, would argue that the ultimate point is competition and glory.
That may be true come June, at least. But on a Tuesday night in March, competition takes a back seat in the NBA; and that’s by design.
Bam Adebayo delivered the NBA its dream performance. As Adam Silver famously said, the NBA is a “highlights-based sport’. While there weren’t exactly many HIGH-lights that came out of this performance, in this day and age, highlights are synonymous with clicks, and there may have been more clicks online last night in the NBA universe than in any singular night before, and that includes the night of Luka trade.
The NBA Loves When Its Players Score
This performance was by design. The NBA has morphed the game to embolden pure scoring in the form of fouls and three-pointers. It was only a matter of time before someone had a night where they could pull this off.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a highly entertaining and incredibly athletic feat. But to be shocked and baffled at the fact that someone broke the record for free-throw attempts in THIS version of the NBA is being ignorant.
Bam Adebayo and the Heat just had the wherewithal to realize that not only does etching their names in the record books matter more than the ethical nature of how they got there, but that the NBA has empowered that line of thinking and is equally, if not more, grateful that they took advantage of of it.
And now, after taking a hit of the scoring-record pipe, if the NBA has anything to do with it, someone will be joining Bam up there sooner rather than later.
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