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Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo made NBA history Tuesday night.
Adebayo scored 83 points, while setting league records for free throws made and attempted in a Miami Heat game during a 150-129 victory over the Washington Wizards. It is the second highest scoring game ever by a player, behind Wilt Chamberlain’s famous 100 point game.
“Absolutely surreal night,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told reporters after the game.
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Adebayo opened with a 31-point first quarter. It was 43 at halftime, 62 at the end of the third quarter. And then came the fourth, where the milestones continued to drop despite a double, triple and what once seemed like a quadruple team from a Wizards defense that kept sending it to the foul line.
He finished 20 of 43 from the field, 36 of 43 from the foul line, 7 of 22 from 3-point range.
After the game, he was seen in tears as he hugged his mother, Marilyn Blount, before leaving the field after the game.
“Welp won’t have career high in the house anymore,” Adebayo’s girlfriend, four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson, wrote on social media, “but at least it gives me something to chase after.”
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Bam Adebayo #13 of the Miami Heat celebrates in the fourth quarter of the game against the Washington Wizards at Kaseya Center on March 10, 2026, in Miami, Florida. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
The previous NBA high this season was 56, made by Nikola Jokic for Denver against Minnesota on Christmas Eve. The last player to score 62 points in three quarters: one of Adebayo’s basketball heroes, Kobe Bryant, who had exactly that many in three quarters for the Los Angeles Lakers against Dallas on December 20, 2005.
He also ended up passing Bryant for scoring in a single game. Bryant’s career high was 81 – a game that was the second best on the NBA scoring list in two decades.
Adebayo scored 31 points in the first quarter against the Wizards, breaking the Heat’s record for points in any quarter – and tying the team’s record for points in a first half before the second quarter even started.
He finished the first half with 43 points, a team high for any half and two points better than his previous career high – for a full game, that is – of 41, set on January 23, 2021 against Brooklyn.
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Adebayo’s season high Tuesday was 32. He tied that with a free throw with 5:53 left in the second quarter, breaking the Heat’s first-half scoring record.
Adebayo’s first half 43 points was the second-best in the NBA in at least the last 30 seasons — dating back to the start of the digital play-by-play era that began in the 1996-97 season.
