Stephen A. Smith Says Bam's 83 is Different From Kobe's 81

NBA history was made this week, but not everyone is happy about it. Bam Adebayo scored 83 points in a blowout win against the Washington Wizards, adding his name to the NBA record books as having the second-highest single-game scoring output in NBA history. 

There’s already been a ton of criticism of Bam’s 83-point night. For one, Bam shot 43 free throws, an NBA record.  The end of the game was also not exactly what you would call normal basketball. As Bam chased Kobe’s record of 81 points, he stayed in the game (despite his team being up 20+ points), and was taking ridiculous shots over double and triple teams. The Heat also were intentionally fouling the Wizards in order to stop the clock and give Bam more opportunities to score. 

Stephen A. Smith recently ranted about what makes Bam’s 83-point night less significant than Kobe Bryant’s 81-point night. 

“Coach Erik Spoelstra who’s a great coach, didn’t look that great last night trying to facilitate Bam Adebayo getting the record, challenging calls, losing challenges just because they recognized history was in the making. THAT AINT HOW KOBE DID IT! — At end of the day, to be up 25 points, clearly chasing numbers, that’s not how Kobe did It. When we compare it there has to be 3 on the list… Kobe goes down as the single greatest performance we have ever witnessed. Wilt has to be number 2 because 100 is 100. Bam gotta be number 3. The bottom line is, he did It. Much respect to Bam… Look, he deserved credit for It, we just have to keep it a buck and understand there’s levels to these kind of performances.”

Bam certainly didn’t do it in the same way Kobe did it. That being said, that doesn’t mean he didn’t accomplish a great feat. Sure, there might be a slight asterisk with Bam’s 83-point night, but it was still an incredible achievement.