Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo made his way into the history books with his incredible 83-point outing against the Washington Wizards on Tuesday. Adebayo’s performance has split opinion, though, as the way he passed the late great Kobe Bryant for the second-highest scoring game in NBA history hasn’t sat well with everybody.
You’d have thought that Shaquille O’Neal, Bryant’s former Los Angeles Lakers teammate, might be in that boat as well, but he isn’t. O’Neal came to the three-time All-Star’s defense on Inside the NBA on Saturday.
“I’m happy for Bam,” O’Neal said. “31 in the first quarter. Hear all the people complaining, ‘Well, he shot 40 free throws.’ Well, stop fouling, Washington Wizards. Alex Sarr should be ashamed of himself. My favorite moment of the night was he’s playing great, his mom’s there having a good time, he’s crying. And a lot of people saying, ‘Well, yeah, he chased the record.’ And you should.
“To all the little kids out there, if you got a chance to break a record, your high school record, if you got a chance to make history, go for it,” O’Neal added. “I’m glad he went for it. I’m glad he got the 83. And I’m happy for Bam.”
You indeed have to go for it because you never know if you’ll ever be in that position again. It wasn’t pretty what was happening in the fourth quarter as Adebayo chased Bryant’s mark of 81 points, but that is fine.
Adebayo had gotten to 70 with 9:05 remaining in the fourth quarter. The game was all but over at that point, as the Heat were up 127-105, but the 28-year-old stayed in. The Heat would then foul to stop the clock down the stretch, and Keshad Johnson even intentionally missed a free throw with the hope that his teammate would get the ball.
All of this would have been enough to rub some the wrong way, but there were also all those free throws. Adebayo was 14-16 from the charity stripe line in the fourth. He’d end the night 36-43 from the line, setting new records for free throw attempts and makes in a game.
O’Neal doesn’t take issue with any of it, but the same doesn’t apply to his and Bryant’s former teammate, Robert Horry. Horry believes there needs to be an asterisk next to this 83-point performance. He felt the game wasn’t respected, and Charles Barkley is in that camp as well.
“When I first saw it, I said, ‘Man, that’s incredible, 83 points. That’s flat-out incredible,'” Barkley said. “And I said, I got nothing but love. Bam does everything right. But then they have to show the highlights… I had some problems with [it]. Like I say, I’m gonna give him a pass because I love Bam… Congratulations to him. But some of that stuff was going on in the fourth quarter,”
Barkley also ripped the Wizards for not having any pride. He believes they should have even resorted to dirty plays in order to get Adebayo out of that game. While that might be a bit much, the Wizards should have started doubling and tripling him a lot sooner than they did. It boggles the mind that they waited till the fourth quarter, when it was a bit too late.
Adebayo has torn into his critics for dissing his performance and said that Wizards head coach Brian Keefe should be the one getting the blame for allowing him to play 1-on-1 for that long. He also added that he was always going to go for it once he found himself in that position. While there is all this backlash, Adebayo firmly believes that Bryant would have congratulated him for passing him if he were alive.
