Twenty years ago, Kobe Bryant made history in Los Angeles when he scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors to move behind Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point night as the second-most points scored in a single NBA game.
On a random Tuesday in March, when NFL free agency and the World Baseball Classic were dominating the headlines, that record was broken.
Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat put up 83 points in a victory over the Washington Wizards. What started as a good game for Adebayo in the first quarter snowballed into an amazing game in the second before finally unleashing as an avalanche in the fourth quarter.
While fans, players, and coaches praised Adebayo for his historic performance, a vocal segment of fans online wasn’t happy about Bryant’s second-place record being broken.
In the fourth quarter, it almost became a parody of itself for how many times the Miami big man went to the free-throw line.
In total, Adebayo went 36 out of 43 from the free-throw line.
In comparison, on the night Bryant destroyed the Raptors, he only went to the line 20 times, making 18 of them.
The other major difference was that Miami was way ahead and cruising to a victory over the Wizards, while Bryant needed to score all of those points for the Lakers to ultimately beat Toronto at home.
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Bryant fans weren’t pleased on social media.
“Those referees that allowed Bum Adegayo to shoot 16 free throws in the 4th quarter need to be fired,” one fan said. “Can’t believe those low iq refs did this to Kobe.”
“The difference between that Kobe 81 and Bam 83 is Kobe’s team was down, and he was helping his team get back and win,” another contributor chimed in on X.
“Not even a Kobe fan, but this is like when Strahan got the sack record. Feels undeserved,” another fan posted.
