Just as we all thought would happen eventually, Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo dropped 83 points during Tuesday night’s game against the Washington Wizards to surpass Kobe Bryant as the player with the second-most points in a single NBA game, behind only Wilt Chamberlin’s 100-point effort in 1962.
No, really.
You’d be forgiven if Adebayo wasn’t even in your top 50 active players most likely to surpass Bryant’s 81-point mark. But it happened, and it is real.
Not shockingly, there are already hoards of people trying to diminish Adebayo’s efforts. He shot 43 free throws, yes. His Heat teammates were fouling to extend the game, yes. Adebayo isn’t seen as a prolific scorer. These things are all true. And perhaps it’s why some people believed that Heat coach Erik Spoelstra would pull Adebayo from the game after tying Kobe Bryant’s record instead of allowing him to attempt to break it.
This logic even crept into the Washington Wizards broadcast on Monumental Sports Network, when announcer Chris Miller suggested Spoelstra was prepared to take Adebayo out of the game after putting up his 81st point.
“And out of respect Erik Spoelstra will pull Bam Adebayo…”
– Wizards announcer Chris Miller thought Bam would stop at Kobe’s 81 😂 Nope pic.twitter.com/34iIikoAD1
— New York Basketball (@NBA_NewYork) March 11, 2026
“A free throw to tie Kobe Bryant,” Miller said before Adebayo matched the record. “And out of respect, Erik Spoelstra will pull Bam Adebayo,” he said before an awkward pause.
“I think Spoelstra’s actually going to keep him in the game, Drew,” Miller told his partner Drew Gooden. “He’s going to go for second-most points in NBA history.”
The premise that Spoelstra should have pulled his player while on the precipice of breaking a longstanding record is ludicrous, even if the record he’s breaking is of the late, great Kobe Bryant. Mamba mentality, anyone?
It’s difficult to believe that Bryant himself would even support such a decision.
Now, it’s understandable why someone in Miller’s shoes would think that pulling Adebayo at that moment was a possibility. The record-breaking performance was so unexpected and from such an unlikely player, it almost seems wrong to allow such a thing to happen.
But that’s what makes the record book great. There are anomalies to be found everywhere. Just because Adebayo didn’t have any history of dropping 50 points on a given night doesn’t make him any more or less deserving of the record than Bryant, or any other player for that matter.