The Heat defeated the Bucks 112-105 tonight, one game after Bam Adebayo’s historic night shook the entire NBA.
Ever since his landmark performance, several critics have thrown shade at him and Erik Spoelstra in various ways, like not giving respect to Kobe Bryant’s record, stat-padding to surpass it, and the style of play down the stretch where he was consistently getting triple-teamed and still tossing up three-point shots.
After tonight’s win, Adebayo clearly had had enough of the critics and decided to fire back at anyone who had criticized him or Erik Spoelstra since the 83-point game.
“For the couch coaches, I mean, if you’re in my shoes and you have, first of all, y’all are blaming me. You should be blaming the head coach. Get that first,” said Adebayo as he shifted the blame from himself onto the Wizards’ head coach, Brian Keefe.
“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. 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 points with 9 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? Okay. A minute? All right. Nine? Yeah, I’m going for it.”
“You can’t be mad at that. If you are mad, I don’t care because a lot of people are upset because if they did play, they never had a chance to get that close to chasing greatness. 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,” said Adebayo as he explained why the Wizards were fouling him down the stretch.
“And four, they’re going to talk about the free throws. 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.”
Adebayo seemingly resonated with Erik Spoelstra’s feelings, who was unapologetic about anything that happened on Adebayo’s special night. He also indicated how he feels Kobe Bryant would have been disappointed with him if he didn’t try to break his record.
“It’s a two-way street. Some people say 83 is 83, doesn’t matter how you get it. Other people’re gonna say it wasn’t the way Kobe did it.”
“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 9 minutes left & I had 70. Be serious.”
Adebayo finished tonight with 21 points, eight rebounds, and two assists while shooting 6-20 from the floor (30.0 FG%) and 9-13 from the free-throw line. He himself joked about it not being the same as his 83-point performance in his honest reflection after the game.
“Emotional roller coaster. Understandably why. To be able to move on to the next game, get the W, figure it out in a different way – it wasn’t 83 tonight. It was 21. If anybody is upset, I don’t care. We got the W, all that matters.”
The Heat have now improved to 38-29 following this win over the Bucks. They have extended their winning streak to seven games and are now going to host the Magic at home on Saturday night, March 14.
A lot more eyes are now on the Heat’s performance since Adebayo’s record-breaking night. It will be interesting to see whether he keeps up with the new expectations.
