Bam’s 83-Point Game Was Pure Slop

“Slop” was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. They define it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”¹ While I don’t disagree, I think we can use slop more broadly, to capture the essence of this moment. What is slop? Slop is a way of describing how it feels like the quality of everything has declined in my lifetime. Brian Philips of The Ringer, among others, has mused on this.

In the case of non-AI slop, it could mean the proliferation of niche music genres under increasingly specific TikTok keywords (alt-urban dank lucid WordPress bluegrass) or fast-fashion brands that churn out 100 new designs a week without any consideration or forethought. It could mean a particularly egregious slate of Netflix movies. “This is vitamin slop,” you could mutter to yourself, wandering through the miles of supplement aisles at your local health-food store.

The “niche music genres under increasingly specific TikTok keywords” thing is really real and has intensified over the years. I remember puzzling over terms like “quiet storm” and “mellow gold” during the pandemic, and now the Spotify algorithm accosts me with such nonsense as “coastal grandmother,” which is apparently conjured by Bill Withers.

Another important point made by Philips is that “slop has contempt for both creators and audiences.” This, to me, is particularly key. The movers and shakers of global capitalism who invent needs, desires, and wants think you are really stupid. They think you want this shit – or at the very least, if you don’t consciously desire it, you’ll consume it anyway, like a pig at a trough. Slop it up!

TV is slop. 24-hour cable news is slop. Bari Weiss has turned the network of Walter Cronkite and 60 Minutes into a vehicle for promoting “radical centrism” (a baffling oxymoron that in and of itself is slop), which in practice looks like devoting an entire town hall to sitting down with Erika Kirk to talk about how she turned her husband’s assassination into something like a book tour combined with a pro wrestling exhibition (what could be more slopified than using your husband’s killing as an opportunity to sell Redbubble merch?). This is coming soon to CNN, by the way, with the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. Though we had some good, non-slop, original-ish IP movies this year (Sinners, One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme, etc), it really is utterly and truly over. “News” and “cinema” are over, to be replaced by infotainment once and for all. Everything is becoming a Super Bowl commercial, the Kelce brothers serving up slop for the braying masses, brought to you by Omnicorp.

Nathan Fielder tried to warn us about Paramount

Other stuff on TV, like game shows hosted by Rob Lowe that allegedly 15 million people watch, is also slop. The shows that Netflix is making, designed for background viewing while you dedicate your attention to short-form video content on your smartphone? You guessed it, slop.

The war with Iran is more slop. The Secretary of Defense is an alcoholic TV news host who calls his department the “Department of War” because it makes him feel like a tough guy, who then orders that Third World fishing boats be turned into a fine mist (even if those boats were indeed trafficking drugs, this measure is like using a bazooka to swat a fly).

Don’t forget about this hilarious scandal when then-National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a group chat (and you thought your group chat blunder was bad)

At least the Bush Administration had the shame to lie to our faces about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The Trump Administration is stocked with the same sort of bloodthirsty criminals that filled the Bush Administration, but these modern iterations are even more nakedly sociopathic about another Forever War in the Middle East. We blew up a girl’s elementary school, killing more than 100 students and wounding close to another 200, and half-heartedly blamed it on Iran. The administration doesn’t pay lip service to the antiquated idea of “spreading democracy,” which was just about plundering natural resources anyway. Not only does the war machine not care about civilian casualties abroad (something they’ve never cared about), but they don’t even really give a shit about American soldiers. Trump says, “when you go to war, some people die,” which is such a shrug of a statement, but then again, Trump has a long and documented history of not caring about servicemembers. Not that slop is limited to the political right-wing: Cory Booker’s proposal to eliminate income tax for those making 75k or less is what I call slopulism (slop + populism).

Slop doesn’t have to be life and death, however. Slop can also be stupid, silly, or inconsequential stuff. Great Wolf Lodge has a new ranch milkshake. I understand all those words separately, but they make no sense together. Just reading it is exhausting. Why would they do this? To garner attention? Who the hell would ever order this? Slop. The new White Castle vending machine in the Boston airport. Slop to the nth degree. I feel ashamed that I even spent a second thinking about any of these things, that I moved my fingers across the keyboard to type these words.

Almost 50 years ago, President Jimmy Carter delivered his famous “Malaise Speech.” There is a “crisis of confidence,” Carter admitted.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

Well, we have a crisis of slop in the world today. Our institutions have been hollowed out by big business. Third spaces are gone, killed by private equity and short-sighted urban planning. Everyone is antisocial, illiterate, and afraid of each other. Why go to a restaurant when you can get a private taxi for your burrito instead? Never take off your sweatpants. Always be frying your brain with at least two screens at a time, neither of which you’re really focusing on. If you knock on your neighbors’ door to borrow a cup of sugar, you might get shot because they never turn off Fox News and are convinced that an unholy Venezuelan-Chinese-Palestinian alliance is about to overrun America (unrelated, but those three could combine to make some mindblowing fusion cuisine – falafel dandan arepas, anyone?).

In the midst of all of this, we play basketball. A sanctuary from the slop most nights, as nearly every night produces exciting games and star performances. Yet we still have hoopslop. The Giannis trade saga at the deadline turned out to be a giant marketing stunt for a prediction market – holy slop! Hoopslop can look like shameless tanking, exhibited by nearly a dozen teams. Jusuf Nurkic is out for the season with a deviated septum – who knew that was a season-ending injury?

Hoopslop can also look like eye-popping box scores from random players, as those tanking teams create opportunities for guys fighting for their next contract – who remembers when Malachi Flynn dropped 50 off the bench (Stephen A. Smith voice: WHO?!) two years ago (Flynn, the 29th overall pick in the wonky 2020 Covid draft, started just 21 games in his short NBA career and is now playing in Turkey). We’ve seen more than a few randoms pop in 50 on any given night – Andre Miller and Corey Brewer, just to name two.² But once we get above 50, the air becomes a little more rarified. Just 38 players have gone for 60 (10 of those have done it more than once). 70? Eleven guys have done it.

And the ultra-rare 80? Until today, the list was two names long: Wilt Chamberlain and Kobe Bryant. A few hours ago, the Miami Heat’s Bam Adebayo notched an eye-popping 83 points. That gives him the second-highest scoring game of all-time, or the highest, if you believe the conspiracy theories about Wilt’s legendary 100-point game being a hoax, which you shouldn’t believe because there is ample evidence to the contrary. It’s an astounding result for Bam, whose previous career-high was, by comparison, a paltry 41. His highest total this season was just 31. Let’s take a closer look.

Full disclosure: I did not watch any of this game. Yes, I was sitting at my desk, where I watch the NBA five days a week. Rob Perez, a mainstay of SiriusXM NBA Radio (@WorldWideWob on Twitter), posts a “League Pass Menu” every day, with every game scored 1-100 on a “Fun Rating.” Celtics @ Spurs, a great matchup between the #2 seeds in their respective conferences, was a 92. Wizards @ Heat was lucky to receive a 49 on this arbitrary metric that I trust more than The New York Times. So I had no knowledge of what Bam was up to until I heard on the NBC broadcast that he had gone for 62 points in the first three quarters.

So, as a box score skimmer, let’s break it down. Yes, he scored 83 points. That’s the most since JFK was in office. But he went 20/43 from the field, good for a FG% of 46.5. Bam is the only 70+ point scorer to miss more shots than he made. He made up for this deficiency by shooting a mind-boggling 43 free throw attempts. If you look at the list of most free throws attempted in a game, most of the other names on the list are big men who used their size and strength to dominate in the paint, but historically awful free-throw shooters, so teams would intentionally foul them as a strategy (known colloquially as “Hack-a-Shaq”).³ Dwight Howard, Andre Drummond, and DeAndre Jordan are the names that join Bam in this illustrious list, and they shot 56.7%, 48.8%, and 47.5% from the charity stripe in their careers, respectively. But Bam is a good free-throw shooter, making 3 out of every 4 for his career. So this is an aberration, and no team would “Hack-a-Bam.”

Now, I’m watching the YouTube highlights of the game. During the first quarter, Bam was legitimately unstoppable. He rained down 31 points on 10/16 shooting (5/8 from three), and chipped in 6/7 from the line. That’s the most by anyone in any quarter this season. The second quarter was a different story. The YouTube video cuts directly from the end of the first quarter (Bam shooting free throws with six seconds left) to midway through the second (Bam shooting free throws with 5:53 left). Bam went 3/8 from the field in the second period, 0/3 from three, and scored half of his 12 points at the free throw line (6/7 in the second period). So at the half, he had 43 points (13/24, 5/11 from three, 12/14 FTs), already surpassing his career-high. That’s a fantastic half, even if he cooled off in the second quarter. He had Alex Sarr, the Wizards’ lanky seven-footer, in hell.

The third quarter saw Bam shoot 36.4% from the field (compared to 37.5% in the second quarter). 4/11 from the field, 1/5 from three, and 10/13 FTs. So that’s ten points from the free throw line compared to nine points from the floor. Still, 62 points in three quarters is a lot. With Kobe’s 82-point mark looming, the pressure was on. And in the fourth, Bam yet again shot 3/8 from the field, this time 1/6 from three, with a disgusting 14/16 mark from the free throw line.

So for those keeping score at home, Bam had an awesome first quarter, the best anyone has had this year (4th most in a quarter, all time), but in the other three quarters managed to score 52 points on a putrid 10/27 from the field (37%), 2/14 from three (14%), with 30/36 free throws. That’s ten more free throw attempts in the last three quarters than the second-most in a full game this season (unsurprisingly, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with 26). If someone – like SGA, the alleged foul merchant – scored 52 points on 30 free throws, they would get clowned like crazy. This is actually how Wilt put up some of his insane scoring totals: with gargantuan volume on stinky efficiency with a ton of free throws (for instance, 78 points on 31/63 FGs, 16/31 from the line). And, in the case of his 100-point game, his team intentionally fouled with a giant lead, just to give him more bites at the apple. But Wilt’s career-high for FTA is just 34, compared with Bam’s 43.

To be fair to Wilt, if I got 100 points put on my head, I would also call it a farce

This outburst is definitely surprising, as Bam is not known as a volume scorer. For those who don’t know, he’s been a 3x All-Star who has finished top-10 in DPOY voting the prior six seasons. He’s known for being reliable and steady, but not one to put up gaudy numbers. He’s yet to make All-NBA, and he probably never will. The Ringer has him as the 28th-best player in the league. As Bill Simmons surmised (who blocked me on Twitter for chirping him about his labor practices),

Bam has averaged about 20 points a game with about 5 free throw attempts since 2020. And considering the Wizards were trying to lose this game, I’m not blown away. It’s impressive, sure. Is this a crazy thing to say about a performance that – according to a statistic called Game Score, an equation created by NBA analytical genius John Hollinger as an extension of his Player Efficiency Rating stat – is the sixth best in the history of the league?

For me, the most impressive performance I’ve ever watched, factoring in the stakes of the game and the effort level of the other team, was Damian Lillard‘s 55-point, 12 three-pointer effort against Denver in the 2021 playoffs. That is, according to Game Score, the best playoff performance in NBA history (55.9).

But to put a bow on the Bam thing, Kenny Beechum has a great video breaking down some of the 4th quarter chicanery. I certainly don’t fault Bam or the Heat for doing everything in their power to break Kobe’s record. Adebayo isn’t exactly the type of player you’ll tell your grandkids about, but this performance will be. But was it slop? I think so. If we imagine that this, instead of being a spontaneous athletic achievement, was a manufactured event, it would feel like the scriptwriters didn’t think much of us. “Yeah, he had 83,” we would say, “but did you actually watch it? Do your own research, man. Don’t listen to what the lamestream media says and think critically.”

Wembanyama, the high priest of ethical hoops, practically yawned at Bam’s 83-point outburst. While we’re leaving being nonchalant in 2025, not caring about this historic mark is just so gangsta. Considering Wembanyama is an incredible specimen, with such a high release point as to make his shot practically unguardable, I think most of us would tab him as the most likely candidate to surpass 83 and make a serious run at the century mark. But would he, given his insistence on ethics?

About three years ago, in a game I watched on my laptop in my dorm room, Damian Lillard put up 71 points on 22/38 (57.9%) from the field, 13/22 from three (59.1%), and a perfect 14/14 from the line. With some simple arithmetic, we can see that free throws accounted for just under 20% of his points that night, compared to 43% of Bam’s 83. Kobe’s 82-point game saw 18/20 from the line – 22% of his points. If we define “ethical” as mostly correlated with not taking free throws, then we can say that Lillard had the most “ethical” 70+ point performance. But ultimately, trying to chase individual brilliance to such an extent is usually divorced from what is best for the team. And close scrutiny of almost any record can yield ways to poke holes in the accomplishment. Sometimes the NBA feels like a discourse generator that also plays basketball games, and I’m sure debates about this performance will dominate headlines for at least a week.

Anyway, how can we fight the slopidemic? If you’re not one of the handful of billionaires who control our politics, multinational corporations, and media, it can feel hopeless. What can I, one person, possibly do? We can join a movement to reject our tech-dystopia by putting the phone down, going outside, and reading a book. Sing a song, learn to play an instrument. Ride your bike, try to ride a skateboard, or walk. Whether you’re any good or not is irrelevant – it’s about choosing to create something uniquely human instead of being the passive consumer that Amazon and the Ellisons want you to be. Even watching a movie (depending on what it is, of course) can be a way to resist the slop tsunami. I, for one, will bury my iPhone in a shallow grave and move to Greece to live on an olive farm (I think I’m more of a Mediterranean work culture guy than a Japanese one). And I’ll continue to advocate for ethical hoops, and against slop in all its forms.

1. Starting an essay with a dictionary definition is really rudimentary stuff, but I think it’s appropriate here. ↩︎
2. Sports Illustrated thinks Andre Miller looked like Richard Pryor with his ‘fro + ‘stache combo, but I think he looks more like another Dre – Mac Dre, that is. ↩︎
3. Although the list also contains good free-throw shooters that were/are prolific at drawing them, Bam isn’t that either. ↩︎