SI:AM | 5 Fun Facts About Bam Adebayo’s 83-Point Game

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I really thought I was going to lead this newsletter with the Maxx Crosby trade falling through, but then Bam Adebayo went out and had one of the best games in NBA history.

In today’s SI:AM:
🔥 Bam goes off
😮 Crosby trade shocker
⚾ Trouble for Team USA

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Bam passes Kobe

At some point last night, I saw a post on social media about Heat center Bam Adebayo having 40 points and thought to myself, “Nice, pretty good game.” What I didn’t realize was that it was only the first half.

Adebayo went on to finish with 83 points, passing Kobe Bryant’s 81 for the second most in NBA history behind only Wilt Chamberlain’s legendary 100-point game.

“It’s a special moment,” Adebayo said. “It’s Wilt, me, then Kobe, which sounds crazy.”

It is pretty crazy. It’s the kind of performance that produces all sorts of fun facts, so let me share a few of my favorites.

His historic first quarter

It was clear that something monumental could be brewing after Adebayo scored 31 points in the first quarter. That’s the fifth most in any quarter since the NBA began tracking play-by-play data in the 1996–97 season. The rest of his teammates only scored nine points in the quarter.

Klay Thompson holds the record for most points in a quarter with 37.

Adebayo surpassed his previous career high before halftime

Before last night, Adebayo’s highest scoring output was 41 points in a loss to the Nets on Jan. 23, 2021. He bested that total in the first half of Tuesday night’s game, putting up 43 points.

An unprecedented number of free throws

Adebayo’s big night was mostly fueled by foul shots. He attempted a staggering 43 shots from the line and made 36 of them (83.7%). That set the NBA record for both most free throws attempted and converted in a single game. The previous high for free throw attempts was 39 by Dwight Howard (who did it twice). The previous record for free throws converted was Wilt Chamberlain’s 28 in his 100-point game.

The sky-high number of free throws will cause some people to roll their eyes at Adebayo’s achievement. After all, Bryant only had 20 free throw attempts in his 81-point game. But give Adebayo credit for knocking down his free throws. He’s almost exactly a league-average shooter from the line (78.2% this season, compared to the league-wide rate of 78.3%), and he was much better on Tuesday night when the stakes were high. They call them free throws, but they’re not a given. Andre Drummond once took 36 foul shots in a game and only scored 17 total points.

Entire teams rarely even shoot that many free throws

In the 974 games played this season, only 21 times has a team attempted as many free throws as Adebayo did himself on Tuesday. That means, on average, a team will attempt 43-plus free throws once every 93 games—greater than the length of an entire season..

But that stat actually overstates how common it is for entire teams to take that many shots from the line. The 21 times that a team has attempted at least 43 free throws this season is the most since the 2018–19 season. In the six seasons between then and now, there were an average of 9.7 games per season in which teams took at least 43 foul shots. So yeah, Adebayo attempted an ungodly amount of free throws.

The teams that scored fewer points in a game this season

There have been 11 games this season in which a team failed to match Adebayo’s 83 points. The most recent example came last week when the Bucks lost to the Celtics, 108–81, in Giannis Antetokounmpo’s return from injury. (That was the third time this season that Milwaukee scored fewer than 83 points.) The Suns actually did it in back-to-back games in late February, losing 92–77 to the Trail Blazers and 97–81 to the Celtics.

It wasn’t that long ago that it was commonplace for teams to fail to match Adebayo’s offensive output. In the 2014–15 season, there were 155 instances of a team failing to score at least 83 points.

Adebayo’s offensive evolution

Adebayo attempted 22 three-pointers in the game, which was the same number of threes he took in his first two NBA seasons.

Don’t expect to see him get close to that number again, but he’s become much more of an outside scoring threat in recent years. Adebayo never attempted more than 15 three-pointers in any of his first six professional seasons, and he made just 12.9% of his threes over that span. In the 2023–24 season, he took 42 threes and made a respectable 35.7% of them. Last season, he suddenly jacked up 221 threes, or 2.8 per game. This year, he’s up to 5.3 per game.

Adebayo remains an elite interior defender and is obviously a great scoring threat around the basket, but his recently acquired ability to stretch the floor makes him even more valuable to the Heat than he was previously.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Italy celebrates after beating Team USA in the World Baseball Classic — Italy’s shocking upset has Team USA in danger of missing the next round of the World Baseball Classic. | Thomas Shea-Imagn Images

Several general managers around the NFL spoke with Albert Breer to help answer the biggest questions surrounding the canceled Maxx Crosby trade.
The Ravens quickly pivoted off of Crosby and reportedly signed former Bengals defensive end Trey Hendrickson to a four-year deal, Mike Kadlick writes.
In his free agency notebook, Breer also looks at how the early quarterback deals may inform the market for Kyler Murray and Kirk Cousins and analyzes what to make of the Jaguars’ subtle approach.
Team USA suffered an embarrassing loss to Italy on Tuesday night that takes the team’s World Baseball Classic fate out of its hands. Tom Verducci breaks down the U.S.’s absurd defeat.
Celtics star Jaylen Brown was ejected during Boston’s battle against the Spurs. Chris Mannix says the early dismissal should not have happened, and the league knows it.
Mannix also examines why the Knicks have been a puzzling team this season.
Heading into the final weekend of the regular season, Kevin Sweeney explores Auburn’s NCAA Tournament case in his latest bracket watch.
Blake Silverman provides his latest view on how the women’s tournament field could shake out.

The top five…

… non-Bam Adebayo things I saw last night:
5. Carter Verhaeghe’s two late goals for the Panthers to tie and then take the lead against the Red Wings.
4. Hofstra coach Speedy Claxton’s emotional reaction to leading his alma mater to its first NCAA tournament since 2001. (Jay Wright was the coach of that ’01 team.)
3. Keon Thompson’s game-winning steal and layup for Stephen F. Austin in the Southland Conference semifinals.
2. Kellen Pickett’s block in the dying seconds to seal Wright State’s victory over Detroit Mercy in the Horizon League championship game. The Raiders are going to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2022.
1. Beck Malenstyn’s goal for the Sabres, where he put the puck through a defender’s legs.