Bam Adebayo's 83 is Hated and That's Good

A flashpoint stoking NBA reform?

After he crossed the 70 point threshold, I was rooting for Heat center Bam Adebayo to break Kobe Bryant’s 3-point line era record of 81 points in a game. There wasn’t much logic to my feelings on the matter. I just wanted to see the inconceivable happen, no matter its meaning. I was shocked when notified that Bam had scored 31 points in the first quarter against the woebegone Wizards. But this possibility? Astounding. Make it so. Engage the the Kobe fans. Photoshop Bam’s face on Wilt Chamberlain’s body. Bring me the Black Swan event via an undersized big whose career average is 16 points per game.

Of course, when history was finally made, after the replay reviews, intentional fouling, and intentionally missed free throw, I was sickened by the capture of my want. It wasn’t quite the unsettled queasiness that followed my teen self watching an Internet gore video. It also wasn’t far from that. What had I become? What had the NBA become?

Afterwards, I could (and did) come up with the rationalization for my rooting interest. Now, in retrospect, the unseemly spectacle was worth rooting for because it shines a light on Adam Silver era decadence. And what better cause is that?

Many basketball fans are disillusioned with the NBA and Bam’s 83 is a flashpoint. I saw some NBA analysts chastising those who slighted this historic happening. “Why not celebrate a great feat?” was the ask/demand of a supposedly Internet-poisoned cabal of basketball cynics. Well, look…come on. I can’t fault Bam Adebayo for taking what’s there, but the NBA fans in my life, non media, all had the same reaction to this. It wasn’t awe or wonder. It was contempt for the modern sport.

The Wizards are tanking. The Heat scored 150 points. Adebayo had 43 free throw attempts, and while he was legitimately getting fouled, that legitimacy makes the Wizards ever less legitimate. How was this basketball? This game, especially the end of it, was a farce.

To be clear, Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game was also decadent, but at least it was back in a dead ball era. The Lakers in those Smush Parker days had become a vehicle for Kobe’s scoring barrages. Fans who followed the 2005-2006 season will recall that Kobe’s scoring was a major storyline leading up to the 81 point night against the Raptors. The historic performance was hardly an out of nowhere Adebayo, but instead the crescendo in a song that had been pumping to this point. This wasn’t a Laker season, but it was certainly a Kobe season. And now that night is a memorable marker of more than just one night.

I attended a game at Staples that season, one incidentally scheduled simultaneous with a large porn convention in a neighboring building, and the Lakers’ showcase fit into the broader surroundings. It was individual scoring porn with the accoutrements of competition serving as a thinly veiled plot contrivance. The Lakers were not in title contention, so Kobe’s individual exploits held a lot more value than the team actually winning. I’d never experienced a crowd so singularly obsessed with one player’s point total. There were boo birds when, say, Luke Walton would make a shot instead of Kobe Bryant.

But here’s one major difference between the Kobe Show and what happened on Tuesday night: Bryant’s scoring binge was notable for its deviation from norms, rather than indicative. Adebayo’s 83 came out of nowhere, but most everyone sees it as part of a larger enshittification trend. The game has been optimized. Bigs who used to battle down low now bomb 3-pointers (Bam, hardly a great shooter, was 7-22 from deep). We might want someone to score 83 points, but we don’t want anyone to score 83 points. Bam Adebayo isn’t a nobody, but he’s nobody an NBA historian would request to hold the 3-point line era record. The top feat should be a measure of individual greatness, not an illustration of how frictionless the game is in a season where multiple teams intentionally lose.

But, with apologies to Bam, his 83 points is just that. It’s a stain on the sport even if he did nothing explicitly wrong. And that’s good, I’d argue. This shouldn’t be celebrated. The NBA needs to reform itself, preferably with a few of Andrew Sharp’s suggestions. It’s hard to get serious changes absent a catalyzing event. There are those who argue Adebayo should have benched himself out of respect for Kobe, and there’s an argument for that, but I’m glad he didn’t. His accomplishment is a mirror. If you don’t like how the sport looks in that reflection, your problem is more with Adam Silver than Bam Adebayo.