The Good, Bad and Ugly Of Week 21 Of The 2025-26 NBA Season
Mar 16, 2026
Week 21 of the NBA season brought basketball fans a mixed bag, including an 83-point performance, a title contender nearly losing to a team of nine guys and a 10-day contract, and a franchise whose season will be known for being the opponent for a record-breaking night. With the playoff season on the horizon, let’s break down the week that was.
THE GOOD:
Wilt, Bam, Kobe. Nobody saw this coming. At no point would anyone have ever guessed that Bam Adebayo, a three-time All-Star and who for years has been one of the better two-way players in the league, with a career average of 16.1 points, would be penciled in for a spot next to Wilt Chamberlain in the record books, overtaking Bryant’s career high of 81 points. However, Tuesday night changed all of that. In Miami’s 150-129 victory over the Washington Wizards, Adebayo scored 83 points, becoming the second-highest single-game scorer in NBA history.
By the end of the first quarter, Adebayo had outscored the Wizards on his own, 31-29 (the Heat scored 40). He had 43 points at halftime (Karl-Anthony Towns had 44) and added 19 in the third quarter to reach 62, overtaking LeBron James' team record of 61. While the first three quarters were captivating, it seemed as though the fourth quarter turned into a full-on circus filled with intentional fouls, quadruple-teams, and Heat players deliberately missing free throws to get possessions back.
For a player whose previous career high was 41 and current season high was 32, Tuesday night was a Hollywood movie played out in real life.
THE BAD:
On Sunday evening, the Golden State Warriors showed up at Madison Square Garden to play the New York Knicks without Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, De'Anthony Melton, Moses Moody, and Seth Curry. With only nine healthy bodies available to suit up, the Warriors signed center Ömer Yurtseven to a 10-day contract just to have a serviceable backup big man to put on the floor.
The Knicks, a legitimate title contender at the start of the season, entered the game as easy favorites. In addition to playing on their home court, the Knicks had a healthy starting five, including their two All-Stars, as well as a healthy bench that by all accounts should have been able to beat the Warriors' starters on their own.
Trailing 35-21 after the first quarter, the Knicks ended the half down 54-45. At one point, the Warriors, led by Brandin Podziemski, Quinten Post, and Gui Santos, three players who are not exactly household names, were actually leading the game by 21 points. Fortunately for the Knicks, who were justifiably getting booed by their home crowd, they outscored the Warriors 38-26 in the third quarter to take a three-point lead into the fourth.
New York narrowly escaped 110-107, raising serious questions about a team that some had pegged to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. While there is something to be said about playing to the level of your opponent, the Knicks need to do some serious soul-searching if they plan on playing late into June.
THE UGLY:
It's one thing to be bad. It's another thing entirely to be so historically bad that you become the setting for other people's greatness. Washington came into Miami’s Kaseya Center on Tuesday night and allowed Bam Adebayo to score 83 points, the second-highest total in NBA history, losing 150-129. The game, especially the Wizards' effort, was so bad that even their own coach, Brian Keefe, referred to it as “not real basketball.”
Entering Tuesday’s game riding an eight-game losing streak, it is no secret that the Wizards are aiming more for lottery ping pong balls than they are wins. Following the loss to the Heat, the Wizards ended the week dropping games to Orlando and Boston, extending their misery to eleven games, three games short of their horrid fourteen-game slide earlier this season.
Fortunately for Wizards fans (if there are any at this point), this won’t be the team’s worst season in history, as that record belongs to the 2023-24 squad, which managed just 15 wins.
