Miami Heat of USAA centre, Bam Adebayo has gained words of support from the team’s coach, following critical comments trailing the player’s historic 83 points netted in a single game of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Sports247 reports that some analysts and fans slammed how Adebayo relied on 43 free throws to achieve the second highest points haul by any player in a single NBA game, but the Nigerian-born star’s gaffer is standing up for him.
Latest information out of God’s Own Country indicates that The Heats’ coach, Erik Spoelstra was defiant, as he scolded critics of the star big man’s 83-point effort in Tuesday’s 150-129 win over Washington Wizards.
“I apologize to absolutely no one,” Spoelstra said curtly, in response to negative comments trailing Adebayo’s second-highest total ever in a single NBA game, behind only Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962.
Adebayo’s feat saw him surpass late legend, Kobe Bryant’s 81 points in 2006, but many observers questioned the integrity of the Nigerian-born player’s haul, as it included 43 free throws (the most in an NBA game) and 22 failed three-pointers.
Critics also noted that Adebayo’s performance came against a Wizards team that has the third-worst record in the NBA, but Spoelstra stressed that the player did exactly what he had been instructed to do before the game.
“It’s a Tuesday night game against a team where they’re not playing for anything, the organization is trying to lose. We’ve already lost a game in that kind of situation. We have players that are sitting out.
“I spoke to Bam … I want, as our best player and team captain, for him to be locked in and he sure was. He approached that game appropriately,” Adebayo’s coach submitted emphatically.
Sports247 gathered further that the new NBA sensation, whose full name is Edrice Femi Adebayo, was born July 18th, 1997 in Newark, New Jersey, USA to a Nigerian father, John Adebayo, and African American mother, Marilyn Blount.
He was given the nickname ‘Bam Bam’ by his mother when, while watching The Flintstones at age one, he flipped over a coffee table in a manner similar to the television show’s character, Bamm-Bamm Rubble.
The then tender-aged lad moved with his mother to North Carolina when he was seven years old, after which he had little further interaction with his father, who died in 2020 in Nigeria, which the player accepted as his heritage at the age of 16.
Adebayo attended Northside High School in Pinetown, North Carolina, then played college basketball for Kentucky Wildcats before being selected by Miami Heat with the 14th overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft.
He is a three-time NBA All-Star, a five-time NBA All-Defensive Team honoree, helped The Heat reach the NBA Finals in 2020 and 2023, before which he won a gold medal with the 2020 and 2024 US Olympic Games teams.
