Bam Adebayo scored 83 points against the Washington Wizards on Tuesday night. The Wizards spent part of the fourth quarter of the game selling every recognizable basketball principle in an effort to prevent Adebayo from breaking the scoring record. They sent panicking thirds and even fourths, twisting and breaking defensive shape to attempt exaggerated ball-dinning schemes, and finally resorted to intentionally fouling Adebayo’s teammates. Something they didn’t do because they couldn’t, and because it goes against organizational goals as a team building strategy, they put better players on the stage. They don’t have a better player. There is no combination of players that can prevent a motivated opponent from scoring 83 points.
The version of basketball the Heat played to promote Adebayo’s record was a fever nightmare, but Miami won the game, scoring 150 points and beating the Wizards by 21 points. This is the second-most points the Heat have scored in a regular season game despite all but a few of Miami’s starters missing the game due to injuries and rest. Looking at the lineup, it’s hard to tell where the shot is coming from, even if it’s not Adebayo.
After the game, Wizards coach Brian Keefe gave a reluctant review of Adebayo’s performance. “You have to give him the ball in the first half. He hit the ball great, he put the ball in really well.” said the emotionless and blind Keefe, not a placeholder doing the unbearably miserable job of motivating a bunch of mismatched idiots for weeks on end without the slightest chance of receiving any real reward. “He came out in the third quarter and scored some points, but they obviously kept him in the game and there were a lot of fouls in the fourth quarter, called 16 free throws. Just trying to get the ball out of his hands, he still got a free throw 40 feet from the rim. I can’t explain some of those calls. That’s all I have to say about it.”
I feel a tiny bit of warmth bloom in my dark heart for Keefe trying to put what happened in this game into basketball terms. He was scoring a lot, so we tried to stop him, but the referee called a lot of fouls.. This wasn’t how it felt from a viewer’s perspective. It felt like the Heat had stopped playing basketball, abandoned the usual incentives of a regular season contest, and started pursuing something basically orthogonal, and the Wizards were furious, imposing a righteous mandate against their own accomplishments. That made it very funny, but it was also ridiculous, damning, and obscene. I like to think that the coach, like a stupid substitute teacher over there, has convinced himself that what’s going on on the floor is actually basketball, a basic quest to beat the opponent and win the game. fool! Poor deluded fool. Come in and give me a hug, kid.
Knowing that inevitably taking away that warmth, or at least replacing it with a different kind of warmth, that sad, soft warmth that one feels when having to dig one’s own grave, actually goes against the whole purpose of setting up this damn competition by ruining hoops so the wizards can win other prizes. Disgustingly, Keefe’s boss made him out to be a hypocrite. He expressed outrage over the degradation of a single basketball game, as his franchise has already degraded 63 basketball games this season alone, and hundreds more over the past few years. Why is the Heat responsible for maintaining competitive integrity, BRIAN? So what on earth are the Heat supposed to do when their relatively serious basketball operations are assigned to fill 48 minutes of action with circus clowns on the court?
“The fourth quarter is no longer a basketball game.” Keefe grumbled with all the solemnity and moral authority of the Artful Dodger, if not incorrectly. Friends, what makes this a real basketball game isn’t exactly where the players stand when they throw the ball toward the basket, nor is it who exactly is doing the throwing. What makes it a real basketball game and not cynical, comical, kayfabe-y basketball choreography is that both teams are trying to win. I implore you not to be indignant at the rare instance in which what you loathe about an organization is one of the two things that maintain the most basic structure of athletics.
The reason your team has good basketball players is so that they can compete well and try to win when playing basketball against other teams. Why do you want to win? Well, except that’s the point of athletics: success feels better than frustration. Sometimes there are good feelings in losing and sometimes there are bad feelings in winning, but on balance, you are more likely to face the bad feelings of competing when you lose. The more brutally you lose, the more likely you are to feel bad. The wizards deserved to be brutally defeated and feel absolutely hell about it. I hope the good teams in the NBA take Adebayo off the all-time scoring list in the remaining weeks of this season. The Wizards play in Orlando on Thursday. Why shouldn’t Paolo Banchero shoot 90? If the Magic are the only ones trying to win, why should it be Keefe’s job how they do it?
