LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Lakers nabbed their second consecutive win against one of the better teams in the NBA following their 120-106 win against the Minnesota Timberwolves, but the talk of the night was Bam Adebayo’s 83-point masterclass during the Miami Heat’s win against the Washington Wizards. Lakers head coach JJ Redick had tuned into the Heat game to watch the closing minutes of Adebayo’s night.
After the Lakers’ win against the Timberwolves, JJ Redick admitted that he didn’t initially know what was going on, and once he realized, he explained what he felt about watching Bam Adebayo drop 83 points.
“It’s incredible what he was able to do. I walked in and I saw the score, and he [Bam] was at the free-throw line, and I saw the score, and they’ve been playing great basketball lately,” Redick recalled. “I said to my coaching staff, ‘oh, they’re rolling.’ They all kind of looked at each other, and they’re like, ‘are you kidding right now?’
“And I’m like, ‘no, what’s up?’. . .They’re like, ‘Bam has 77.’ And then I watched the last three minutes, and that was a different type of basketball.”
What Redick was no doubt referring to was the final minutes when it became apparent the Heat were trying to get Adebayo to surpass the 81-point performance held by former Lakers star Kobe Bryant. It involved a few intentional fouls by the Heat to extend the game and get extra possessions to get the ball back in Adebayo’s hands.
But at the end of the day, Adebayo’s name is stamped in NBA history with the second-highest individual scoring performance behind only Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points.
