There have been plenty critics of Bam Adebayo and the Miami Heat following the 83-point performance against the Washington Wizards
Ex-NBA player Vernon Maxwell is the latest to criticize the Miami Heat and center Bam Adebayo.
Last week Adebayo scored 83 points in a blowout victory against the Toronto Raptors. Many said they felt the Heat were chasing the milestone. The point total surpassed Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant's 81 points in 2006. It is second only to Wilt Chamberlain, who has a 100-point game.
While speaking on the All The Smoke podcast, Maxwell was overly critical of Adebayo and the Heat organization.
“83 is 83 but the way he got it, it’s like fake news," Maxwell said. "I saw the game and toward the end it got sketchy. It was (messed) up! Washington was playing like they wanted to get the game over they were down 30 points. You got Miami players fouling them (bleep). The 43 (bleeping) free throws? Good god that’s half of his (bleeping) points. Kobe is turning over in his grave. God bless you Kobe. There’s a lot of (bleep) going on in the NBA and the (bleep) you saw with Bam is part of it. It was a ugly look for the NBA.”
Adebayo has since defended the performance. He felt the Wizards were more responsible for it.
“For the couch coaches, first of all, you’re all blaming me; you should be blaming their head coach [Wizards’ Brian Keefe],” Adebayo said after the Heat's game against the Milwaukee Bucks. “I was not the one letting me go one-on-one the whole game until I had 70 and then you [the Wizards] started to send a double. At that point, I had 70 with nine minutes left to go in the game. You think I’m not going for it? That’s the thing that’s crazy when they talk about the ‘unethical’ part of basketball. If I have 70 with nine minutes to go, who would just be like, ‘you know coach, just take me out.’ Yeah right. Anybody in my shoes with nine minutes left, okay. A minute, alright. Nine? Yeah, I’m going for it. You can’t be mad at that. If you are mad, I don’t care. A lot of people are upset because, if they did play, they never had the chance to get that close to chasing greatness. If you get that close to chasing greatness, that’s the point of chasing it, so you can surpass it.”
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Shandel Richardson is the publisher of HeatRoundtable. He can be reached at shandelrich@gmail.com