Sports are What we Make Them

On Bam Adebayo's historic night in the NBA, an unexpected loss for the United States in the WBC and the absurd brilliance of the games we love.

Two very strange things happened in the world of sports on Tuesday.

1. Bam Abedayo shot 46% from the floor, made just 7 of his 22 three-point attempts … and SCORED EIGHTY THREE POINTS.

2. The United States lost big to Italy in the World Baseball Classic and is now in real danger of getting knocked out of the whole tournament.

What a world. What a world.

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Some years ago, I pitched a book on Wilt Chamberlain. It didn’t go anywhere, but I remember spending quite a lot of time in the library poring over microfilm game reports from Wilt’s 100-point game in Hershey, Pa., against the New York Knicks.

Microfilm was all we had back then.

Well, also microfiche. Anyone out there remember microfiche?

Here are some fun facts I picked up about Wilt’s game.

— Two months earlier, Wilt scored 78 points in a triple overtime loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. After the game, coach Frank McGuire was furious for many reasons, particularly the fact that the Lakers at some point simply stopped covering everybody else … and it worked.

You have probably heard Adam Sandler’s wonderful impression of the opposing coach during Wilt’s 100-point game:

“Uh, who’s covering Wilt?”

But the truth is that EVERYBODY covered Wilt in those days. McGuire angrily said after the game: “Wilt will score 100 points someday, even if a whole team plays him.”

Well, that’s what happened. Throughout the game, but especially in the last four minutes, the Knicks simply stopped covering everybody else. The other great part of Sandler’s Wilt bit is his impression of the other four players on the floor: “Hey, I’m open, man. What are you doing? Pass the ball. I got my family here.”

— That season had the famous 100-point game, a 78-point game, a 73-point game, two 67-point games, and TEN other 60-plus point games.

— In many ways, Wilt’s 100-point game was pretty typical of his season — he just took A few more shots than usual (he took an astonishing 63 shots; Sandler was right about him being a ball hog). He made 36 of those shots. That’s 72 of his points.

He also uncharacteristically made 28 of 32 free throws.

Those 63 shots are the record — even Kobe Bryant never took more than 50 shots in a game. There have been 15 games where a player took more than 50 shots. Twelve of those are Wilt Chamberlain.

All of which takes us to Bam’s game on Tuesday against the tanking Washington Wizards. He took a career high 43 shots — 16 more shots than he’s ever taken in a game before — and he made 20 of them, including seven three-pointers.

That’s 47 points worth, which would have been Bam’s career high. He had never scored more than 41 points in a game before.

But it turned into a scoring night for the ages because Bam made 36 of his astonishing 43 free-throw attempts. Both of those are records, by the way:

Most free throw attempts in a game:

1. Bam Abedayo vs. Washington, 2026, 43

2. Dwight Howard vs. Orlando, 2013, 39

3. Dwight Howard vs. Golden State, 2012, 39

4. Andre Drummond vs. Houston, 2016, 36

5. Wilt Chamberlain vs. St. Louis, 1962, 34

Most free throws made in a game:

1. Bam Abedayo vs. Washington, 2026, 36

2. Wilt Chamberlain vs. New York, 1962, 28

3. Adrian Dantley vs. Houston, 1984, 28

4. Adrian Dantley vs. Denver, 1983, 27

5. Adrian Dantley vs. Dallas, 1980, 26

If nothing else, I’ve been able to remind you about the great Adrian Dantley. Teach, they called him. He was just 6-foot-5, but he played down in the post, attacked the basket, shot 54% from the floor, and was a master at getting fouled.

Anyway, this Bam game was so strange and out-of-nowhere, it’s hard to put into context. As my pal Tom Haberstroh asks: “Is this the most unlikely sports feat by a good player ever?”*

*How good is Bam Abedayo? Well, I glanced over the NBA rankings put together by The Ringer, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report, ESPN, etc. They all have him somewhere between 21 and 30. That feels right to me.

I suppose, in the annals of sports, the ultimate example of a good player doing an incredible thing was Don Larsen throwing that perfect game in the 1956 World Series. But I don’t think those two are comparable. One, Bam is a much better player than Larsen was.

And two, Larsen pulled off his miracle in the World Series. Bam accomplished his against a team not trying in a pointless March NBA game. So, that doesn’t track.

You’ve got the Dodgers’ Shawn Green going 6-for-6 with four home runs and 19 total bases in a game in Milwaukee. In some ways, I like that one — I’d say Shawn Green was roughly as good as Bam Abedayo. But I’d also say going 6-for-6 with four home runs, as amazing as it is, does not quite compare with scoring EIGHTY-THREE points in an NBA game.

Tom brings up Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson. That’s interesting. But I have too many feelings about that fight to include it here — someday I’ll go ahead and write a whole thing about that fight and about the enchanting but absurd myth of Mike Tyson.

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Look, the tiebreaker rules of the World Baseball Classic are confusing, to say the least. I get it. But if you’re the manager of the United States baseball team, you might want to at least be aware of what your team needs to do in order to advance into the knockout round, right? I mean, that feels like the bare minimum.

U.S. manager Mark DeRosa is now talking around it … but it sure seems likely that he had no idea that the U.S. needed to actually beat Italy on Tuesday to advance.

I don’t base this on the fact that he rested Cal Raleigh, Bryce Harper, and Alex Bregman, and put Paul Goldschmidt in the game in what appeared to be a sort of nod to the veteran’s fine career.

No, I base it on this comment he made on MLB Network before the game:

“We want to win this game even though our ticket is punched to the quarterfinal.”

That seems fairly straightforward.

Don’t try to find that comment online, by the way. MLB has apparently taken it down.

DeRosa also seemed entirely unaware that the tiebreaker would come down to runs allowed. I mean, maybe he was actually aware of that, but being unaware would better explain his decision to start rookie Nolan McLean and then follow him up with veteran reliever Ryan Yarbrough, who gave up 13 homers in 64 innings last year.

So is it wrong to say that DeRosa not knowing that his team did NOT have its ticket punched to the quarterfinal is … kind of funny? I mean, sure, you can play the rage card if you want. That’s the default. But, seriously, this U.S. team with a million superstars — with, like, Aaron Judge and Bobby Witt Jr. and Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal and all the rest — might have gotten itself knocked out of the tournament by a few Italian Americans with names like Jac Caglianonne, Sam Antonacci, and Vinnie Pasquantino?

That’s objectively pretty funny, come on.

I guess I believe sports are what we make them. On a single day, Bam Abedayo scored 83 points, and the U.S. lost to a baseball team representing Italy. Sure, you can say that Abedayo’s game points out the absurdity of tanking in the NBA. Sure, you can say that Mark DeRosa didn’t do some basic WBC rulebook reading and might have wrecked the U.S. chances of winning it all!

I prefer to think that it’s all kinds of wonderful. I mean, why care about sports otherwise?