People saying bam should’ve stopped out of respect is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard

We’re probably going to see some YouTube videos soon analyzing thesw games

You’re correct.

Luka’s 73 though…

Nobody is adding anything new to this conversation. Just posting the same couple threads hourly.

You realize there is a record of Kobe’s game to verify what you are saying, right?

https://www.espn.com/nba/playbyplay/_/gameId/260122013

The Lakers only led by 13 points (not 20) with 2 minutes and 45 seconds to play. The Raptors kept fouling Kobe not to help him get to 81 but because they were trying to win the game. The moment that fouling finally led to a 20 point lead, Kobe took his free throws and was removed from the game at the next opportunity.

Kobe scored 0 points after they had a 20-point lead, not 7.

They’re hating because who did it, it’s broken their brains that it wasn’t some legendary scorer that took Kobe’s spot

I think maybe because Wilt is Wilt, Kobe is Kobe, and Bam is… Bam. It’s all about star power. Also Kobe was on a scoring rampage for weeks if I’m not mistaken. This was just an anomaly, and is looked upon as “not representative”. But who cares, the record is the record.

Shooting/taking FTs is part of the game. Fouling to get the ball back for extra shots, purposefully missing FT for more shots all while up 25 is night and day different.

People being unable to understand this is a microcosm of how bad some humans are at basic judgement and understanding.

This is why a lot of players, coaches, former and current were so middle of the road on Bam’s outburst vs Kobe’s. The fact you can’t believe / understand it is the actual crazy thing.

You’re not scoring 70 without chucking.

Why do people keep bringing up Kobe. Kobe has literally nothing to do with people’s reactions about bams game. I honestly didn’t think scoring 80 could ever be ugly, but that was fugly as hell

At bare minimum you’d have to take 27 shots (all 3s) to hit 80 points legitly. There is nobody taking 27 casual 3s. There’s no way to get to 80 points casually.

If it makes you feel any better, in 20 years the only thing people will remember is that Bam scored 83. They won’t talk about how it happened.

One can argue that the whole Wilt game was garbage time… noone cared about that game, not even the players.

As for Kobe: Yes, he did not go out of the game, and that was fine. Was fine for Bam too. The disgrace is the intentional fouling from both sides to get more time/less chances for Bam to break the record. Both teams were asses, so for me personally, that game is 79+4* We will never know if he would have broken it without that tomfoolery. 3 points in 2 minutes against those Wizards is totally doable, even on triple teams. (just draw the foul) I wish he would have gotten it from just staying in. I’d give him a 80-90% chance of tying and 50+% of beating Kobe that way.

The Kobe argument is the dumbest thing ever. Guess what the score when the game was going into the 4th quarter

83 is 83 and that’s tough as hell.

Stat padding is one thing. Fouling to get the ball back, and teammates missing free throws on purpose to do it is another thing.

If you can’t comprehend the difference it’s not our fault lol

The Lakers were down 66-51 going into the 3rd quarter and Kobe put up 27 points in the third to take the lead.

The heat were winning 76-62 going into the third and they were already stat padding for him.

Can we just give Bam his flowers while also saying the end of the game is legitimately lame? Shenanigans to that level sucks.

Why so many people want to somehow act as you either put an asterisk on the game or have zero issues is just wild to me.

IMO a blowout is the best time to chase that type of milestone. If one team’s up 30 after 3, why wouldn’t you wanna give fans a reason to watch the 4th?

Stop gaslighting. All the complaints that are highly upvoted here are about the intentional fouling to get the ball back, not the attempt to pass Kobe. Look at my flair. I have personally said and will say it again here that I have no problem with going after Kobe’s 81. Stop trying to act like the consensus here is that going after 81 is unethical and disrespectful.

The only shocking thing is people being shocked that anything at all happening would have a universal positive reaction on the internet. Who cares what people think? This will be in the history books regardless of any discourse around here.

Man it’s hilarious that there are people upset about other people not being equally impressed about something.

You must like the things I like!

Brother, there are levels to this, How in the hell can you not understand that? Kobe’s team was also down by 20 in the third yet you conveniently left that out. Context matters

The issue is guys like robinson and booker scored 70+ with full intention of turning a meaningless game into scoring contest from get go

Bam played and scored deservedly for except last 10 pts or so and thats totally fine. A great first quarter performance in a must win game for them, even if its against a weak opponent. He didnt start the game with this intention unlike Robinson. Imagine he went to locker room before start and told “yo am gonna drop 80 today, lets play around that strategy” Spo would have sent him back home

Hey moron, no one is saying Bam shoulda been on the bench or not shooting free throws when Wizards fouled him. He issue people had was Spo intentionally fouling and basically the entire thing turned into a joke. It wasn’t basketball.

Y’all keep saying the same shit that’s not even the problem people had with what happened. So Kobe being in the game late shooting free throws is irrelevant. Also, Bam made 16 more free throws than Kobe took.

Admiral admits his teammates were looking to feed him in his 70 piece. It takes a different kind of homer to buy into the PR so hard they can’t congratulate a great performance.

Gonna be honest the fact I see so much defending of the 83 means to me this shit gonna be treated like it has been up to this point going forward. Forgettable moment that had no stakes or story behind it to make it last in a legendary way. Choices were made that took away from his once in a lifetime night that will become a random trivia question.

Bam statpadded the whole second half, it’s time we acknowledge that

So brave.

Are you reading this ongoing negative discourse on twitter or another sub? It’s not happening here and hasn’t been so why is there still multiple defensive posts about it each day? easy karma? Just don’t want people to move on from it? Having doubts yourself and need the guarenteed flood of ‘you’re right’ comments to drown yourself out?

43 free throws dude 

Well, to counter your Kobe point, it was a 4 point game with 7 minutes left. This game was a 30 point game with 9 minutes left

FACTS

Anyone hating on Bam is crazy.

Now I do think there’s an argument to not like what the Heat did in fouling Washington for more possessions. You mentioned Kobe taking free throws in a blowout but the Lakers weren’t fouling Toronto to give Kobe more chances to score. I don’t blame Bam for that, that’s on Spo. But I can understand where a fan might feel kinda bleh about it because of the fouling

Don’t matter who also did what to statpad Bam definitely was unethical and that last 12 points he got was ugly to watch

I have two points here.

1. People (Zack Lowe) want to complain about Keshad Johnson intentionally missing a freethrow while completely ignoring the fact that Washington intentionally fouled him so Bam couldn’t shoot. Then the wizards coach has the audacity to talk about how it wasn’t basketball, while his best player is in street clothes

2. The heat won. And they wouldn’t have without a big performance from Bam. If the wizards wanted to avoid that last 10 minutes, all they had to do was keep up, but they couldn’t. So how can you say it wasn’t basketball? It was better than whatever the wizards were doing!

Who cares that’s all people do all day every day is find something new to be angry about online. It’s a rage bait culture and people willingly click on it every chance they can get.

I didn’t have a problem with any of it, personally - aside from Miami fouling intentionally (while up near 30), just to get the ball back. That’s… meh. Him chucking, his teammates getting him the ball, the FTs - no issues with. If you can’t stop him without fouling, that’s on you.

Biggest gripe is Washington cosplaying as an NBA-level defense that night. When’s the last time a team has scored 129, shot 52% from the field, over 40% from 3… and still got dogwalked out of the stadium?

Can we just get a Bam mega thread until people are tired talking about this?

What record?

The reframing of the criticism is so disingenuous. The issue was completely due to how things went down in the 4th quarter. The absolute shenanigans were ridiculous.

Also, Kobe put the game away in the 4th. With the Bam game, the game was already long put away.

It’s why you just didn’t hear the reactions when Kobe, Dame, Embiid, and Luka had their 70 point games. They didn’t come with the ridiculous shenanigans. But it is why people don’t respect the Booker 70 - because the Celtics stopped caring about even playing defense when the game was long lost already.

I don’t know why the people being cringe about “respecting Kobe’s record” ended up being propped up as the main criticism. Nobody would’ve cared if it was a more organic 83.

Nobody cares about statpadding a career game in the normal flow of a game. Like you said it happens all the time. What made it a joke to a lot of people was the intentional fouling and teammate intentionally missing FTs.

I feel like Heat fans are just deliberately missing the point to keep comparing it to the end of the Kobe game. Show me where the Lakers were intentionally fouling up 20.

No matter how much you try you can’t watch the bam game and the Kobe game and pretend they are the same.

Lakers Raptors was a 10pt game with 5min left and Lakers were down until the end of the 3rd qrtr. Kobe was way more efficient and didn’t shoot 43FT. Kobe was a known chucker for sure but Bam’s game is not comparable to Kobe’s.

The Lakers had a lead like that because of Kobes performance, though. They were getting killed at half

i remember when people complained when Steve pulled Klay when he had 60 in 3Q. now people are complaining about statpadding. shrug

Nobody in the history of the league has scored 80 without statpadding.

Here’s some fun trivia: Mikan scored 83% of his team’s total points in a game without any stat padding.

Wilt, Kobe, Bam, Luka - none of them have come close to scoring that percentage of their team’s points in a game.

• Wilt’s 100 was but a mere 59% of his team’s points that game.
• Bam’s 83 was just 55%
• Kobe’s 81 was the most respectable of the three, notching 66% of his team’s points

But stat padders all, as you say.

Granted, in Mikan’s epic scoring output, his team lost. And granted, Mikan “only” put up 15 points that game. But still! :-)

Yeah but Bam statpadded wayyy more than 7 points, its not exactly a fair comparison

This is just how conversations surrounding basketball, or really anything, go now. A lot of entertainers are motivated to give people negative viewpoints because that’s apparently what people react to. And if your reacted that means they reached you and can trojan horse whatever ads were tacked along with their message

Bam was going off in that first quarter

I thought i was taking crazy pills when this wasn’t the first comment in all of those stupid threads.

what if i don’t care about the ethics of it and just regard it as a thing that any lead player of any team could do on any given night when the entire arena is in on the gag?

Funniest part to me is all the people talking about how much Miami was up with 3-4 minutes to go, like we haven’t watched this team blow 20+ point leads in under 3 minutes multiple times over the last few years lol

We know.

how can a 20pt lead in 2 and a half minutes be insurmountable when TMac managed to score 13pts in 33secs to steal the win?

If people will negatively judge every high scoring record posted by players then they should start with Wilt’s 100.

The man was a feet taller than everyone else. It was like clubbing baby seals for that man on a daily basis.

Kobe didn’t stat pad

People have too much internet nowadays

Dame

Kobe didn’t play much of the 4th quarter in his 81

most games end with free throw time

You guys are seriously stupid to compare Kobe and Bam’s performance. The lakers were down double digits during the game.

We are talking about a guy who scored 62 points in 3 quarters against a mavericks team who would become champions. And he sat out the entire fourth.

They were down 18 at one point in the second half. Also FYI,this was his 666th career game. Do with that information as you please.

Oh we’re still on this?

Can I whiteknight Bam tomorrow? Is it my turn?

People thinking kobe scored 81 without opponents letting him shoot 😂

People that got an “issue” with it are just bots and repeat everything they hear everybody else say instead of analyzing these games for themselves lol.

If any Kobe fan is upset then they obviously didn’t watch Kobe’s last game. What a mockery that was.

True, but seriously?? This was a whole new level. Bam’s last 10-15 pts were a disgrace.