If anyone was going to throw cold water on Bam Adebayo’s historic 83-point performance, Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo was the most likely candidate.
In one of the most shocking and unexpected achievements in NBA history, Adebayo scored 83 points in 42 minutes during the Miami Heat’s 150-129 win over the Washington Wizards Tuesday night. Adebayo entered the game with a season scoring average of 18 and a career high of 41 points. He has been a very good player throughout his career, but no one could have predicted he was capable of 83 points.
And in one of the least shocking moments in sports media history, Wednesday morning on First Take, Russo was not impressed with the performance, predictably focusing on some of the hijinks that took place to get Adebayo over 80 points.
“You wanna bow down to this,? Go bow down. I’m not bowing down…You wanna call me a guy whose gonna be a dark cloud? Go ahead. Old man screaming on my lawn, I’m not interested.” – Chris Russo not impressed with Bam Adebayo pic.twitter.com/NONrF7xj4g
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 11, 2026
“You wanna bow down to this? Go bow down. I’m not bowing down. He took 43 shots,” Russo ranted alongside Stephen A. Smith on First Take. “Under 50%, there’s nine guys over 70 (points), he’s by far the worst shooting percentage. 22 threes! 22 threes in the game? He’s a seven-footer, I know everybody shoots threes, but…what Spoelstra did with the shenanigans in the game is a complete disgrace. Wilt had some shenanigans with him in ‘62, I understand there’s always a little fooling around with the game. But the Heat, fouling the Wizards right away to stop the clock? Really? When you’re up by 40? The other thing is he took 43 free throws in the game. You know the career high of Kobe and Jordan and the free throws are? 27.
“Listen, 83 points, go ahead, put the sign up, enjoy it, bow down, have fun. Social media, knock ‘em dead. You wanna call me a guy whose gonna be a dark cloud? Go ahead. Old man screaming on my lawn, I’m not interested. But when you shoot 43 times and shoot less than 50%, when you shoot 43 free throws and you go 7-22 from three against a horrendous team and you’re in the game in the last five minutes and Spoelstra’s fouling the Wizards to get more possessions so he can score 83 points, that’s not the way it should be. And I’ll tell you right now, he’d never admit it, I bet you Pat Riley feels the same way.”
The final few minutes of Miami’s win over Washington was ugly. The Heat were missing free throws and fouling the Wizards to get Adebayo more touches. And after playing no defense for most of the game, the Wizards were now concerned with double-, triple-, and quadruple-teaming Adebayo to keep the ball out of his hands. Russo is right about one thing, there is no way Pat Riley enjoyed watching the final quarter of that game. But where Russo is wrong is that this was still an impressive performance.
As he noted, similar things went on to get Wilt Chamberlain to 100 points in 1962. By most historical accounts, Chamberlain’s 100-point game was less ethical than what went on to get Adebayo to 83. Yes, the last few minutes, maybe even the last quarter of Tuesday night’s game was ugly, but Adebayo still scored 31 points in the first quarter on his way to 83. He still had 62 points after three quarters and exhausted himself by chasing history. Adebayo scoring 83 should be the lede in this story, everything else is more of a footnote.