MIAMI — The Miami Heat led the Washington Wizards by 25 points with 2:56 left. The game was essentially over, the outcome decided. And Bam Adebayo got called for an offensive foul that, under normal circumstances, would not have mattered.
These were not normal circumstances.
Adebayo already had 77 points on Tuesday night and the Heat wanted more. So, coach Erik Spoelstra emphatically challenged that offensive foul call. Every Heat player, assistant coach and staffer jumped off the bench, celebrating that decision. The challenge failed — refs got the call right — but it was clear what the moment meant to Miami.
Adebayo wound up scoring 83 points. It was the second-highest total by any player in any game in NBA history, passing Kobe Bryant's 81 and trailing only Wilt Chamberlain's 100.
"The thing you love about it, and why everybody roots for Bam, is because he does all the winning things," Spoelstra said. "He does the things that aren't recognized. He puts his body out there, he's available, he is a rugged competitor."
The Heat, who won 150-129, obviously loved it. Not everybody did.
There were immediate detractors who pointed to Adebayo's absurd, one-of-a-kind stat line — 43 field goal attempts, 22 3-point attempts and, most of all, NBA records of 36 free throws and 43 attempts — as proof of stat-padding. Some even went as far as to question the integrity of the game, though to be fair, many also celebrated Adebayo's night.
"Look, bruh had 83 points. Bruh shot 43 foul shots," former Heat point guard Jason Williams said in a video posted to social media. "I don't know if I shot 43 foul shots in one season." (Williams, for the record, attempted only 41 free throws in his final two NBA seasons combined.)
A crazy finish
There were at least four instances of Heat players fouling down the stretch, with a big lead, to extend the game and get Adebayo the ball back. That's also what the Philadelphia Warriors did in the final moments against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962 — the night Chamberlain scored 100.
"We had three guys collapsing around him to keep him from getting close to the basket, but he took us with him with his tremendous strength," the Knicks' Darrall Imhoff said that night, as quoted by The Evening News of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Late in the game, the Warriors fouled us deliberately to regain possession and that guy really tore down the floor to keep his record assault going."
Sounds familiar.
The Wizards threw double-, triple- and sometimes quadruple-teams at Adebayo in the final minutes. They fouled Heat players just to keep Adebayo from scoring, though they saved most of their fouls for Adebayo himself. He was fouled 26 times — the most any player has been fouled in at least the last 20 seasons, and 12 times more than he had ever been fouled.
"The fourth quarter just turned into not a real basketball game," Wizards coach Brian Keefe said.
Adebayo had 31 points in the first quarter, 12 in the second quarter and 19 in the third. He had 62 points going into the fourth. The Wizards couldn't stop him, no matter what they tried.
"The whole first 3 1/2 quarters ... I was like, all right, they're just going to let me go," Adebayo said. "And then, you turn around and you've got four people guarding you."
Everything the Heat did in the fourth quarter was about getting Adebayo points.
Bryant's 81-point game wasn't different in that regard.
Parallels to other big nights
On Jan. 22, 2006, the Los Angeles Lakers took 38 shots in the second half and Bryant took 28 of them. They took 17 shots in the fourth that night; Bryant took 13 of those, including all 13 of the Lakers' free-throw attempts in the final 12 minutes. It's not terribly uncommon; when a guy really has it going, his teammates just keep giving him the ball.
"We left him in," then-Lakers coach Phil Jackson said that night, "until he got to 80."
When Adebayo's game went final, not everyone seemed thrilled by the point total.
"A rather melancholy footnote in NBA history occurred," the legendary Lakers public address announcer Lawrence Tanter said to the crowd before a game in Los Angeles, as he revealed that Adebayo had passed Bryant. A few people booed.
Houston guard Kevin Durant pointed out that it takes a certain stamina just to get 43 shots off in a game, and Adebayo was clearly exhausted when it was over. The Heat wore red uniforms Tuesday night; Adebayo — who typically puts on a fresh uniform at halftime — had a jersey that seemed to be a far darker shade than everyone else's by the end, since it was completely soaked through with sweat.
"It doesn't matter how you get there. All that matters is that you got it," Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo said. "Like in 30 years from now, nobody's going to remember how many free throws he shot. I don't think I remember how many shots Kobe had or how many free throws he made or 3s. All you remember is 81. Wilt, 100. At the end of the day, he got 83 points."
A rare sustained show of greatness
Over the last 30 seasons, there have been 2,873 instances, including playoffs, of a player scoring at least 15 points in the first quarter.
In other words, it happens all the time. Those nights usually don't get sustained, for whatever reason. A rotation changes. Players cool off. An opposing defense adjusts. A game gets out of hand.
Consider, of those with 15-point first quarters:
— They go on to score 10 or more points in the second quarter just 9.5% of the time.
— They go on to score 10 or more points in both the second and third quarters 3.3% of the time.
— And they go on to score 10 or more points in every quarter 0.8% of the time.
But Adebayo never stopped. He never caught Chamberlain, but passed Bryant. The top two trending topics, globally, on X at times Tuesday night were Bam and Kobe, flip-flopping at No. 1 and No. 2 for a couple of hours.
Adebayo made March 10, 2026 unforgettable in Miami. Bryant made March 10, 2011 unforgettable in Miami for a different reason. Tuesday was the 15th anniversary of a Lakers loss to the Heat, after which Bryant took to the court, while his teammates went to dinner, and punished himself with a 90-minute shooting workout because he was frustrated with how he played.
Adebayo never met Bryant. He wore his sneakers for many years, even played in them. Among his prize souvenirs: a Kobe jersey, which players got at the 2020 All-Star Game a month or so after Bryant died in a helicopter crash.
Now, he and Bryant are truly linked.
"Someone I idolized," Adebayo said. "This is crazy to me."
Copyright 2026 NPR