The headlines this morning said Bam Adebayo 83 points, but it would be easy to think it was clickbait. A quick check of ESPN or the NBA website, though, would reveal that the Miami Heat forward/center did, in fact, have the second-highest scoring game in history against the Washington Wizards. He passed Lakers legend Kobe Bryant (81) and sits second all-time for points in a game behind arguably the greatest basketball player ever, Wilt Chamberlain (100).

The game’s final score of 150-129 might look like it was a double overtime game, or halftime of the NBA All-Star game, but it was a final score of regulation. Not much defense was played, which is ironic, as is the fact that the feat was achieved by a player known more for his defense than his offense (career 16 points per game average). That’s not a knock on what Adebayo achieved, nor is it a testament to the softness of today’s game, especially when considering the final score of Chamberlain’s 100-point game was 169-147.

Bam Adebayo 83 Points In Context

Adebayo took 43 shots, making 20, and became the first player in NBA history to score 70 or more points while shooting under 50% from the field. The bulk of his accomplishment came at the charity stripe, where he made 36 of 43 attempts (83.7%). This is a jump from his career average of 75.9%, but that’s what needs to happen in historic games. Chamberlain was a notoriously bad free-throw shooter, but in his historic game, he made 28 of 32 foul shots (87.5%).

Since the 1983-84 season, a player has taken 43 or more shots in a game 17 times, and surprisingly, only four times has a player made more than 50% of those shots. Seven times, a player taking more than 43 shots made fewer than 20. The worst shooting night was Cade Cunningham’s 14-46 performance, when he scored 46 against the Wizards in November of last year. People seem to like putting the ball up against Washington this year.

There have been 16 games in NBA history when a player has scored 70 or more points in a game. Chamberlain did it six times, and 10 other players did it once. The lowest-scoring affair was a 112-97 San Antonio Spurs win over the Los Angeles Clippers on April 24, 1994. In that game, David Robinson scored 71 points on 26 of 41 shooting. It was the Spurs’ last game of the season, and it helped The Admiral secure a scoring title over Shaquille O’Neal that year.

Adebayo has the lowest career scoring average of any player to score 70 or more in a game, followed by David Thompson (22.4), who scored 73 in a loss to the Detroit Pistons in 1978. The fact that he was able to manage the second-highest scoring output in NBA history should serve to prove that 101 is possible. If on any given night, a defensive stopper can drop 83, what could a prolific scorer do?

Congratulations to Adebayo on his amazing achievement. It turns out the headline wasn’t clickbait, but that doesn’t make it any less unbelievable.