Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo joins Dan Patrick on The Dan Patrick Show to talk about scoring 83 points and eclipsing his idol Kobe Bryant’s legendary 81-point game.
Dan Patrick: “No thought of Kobe, who was one of your idols? Did you ever think of stopping at 81?”
Bam Adebayo: “No. Because I know if it was the other way around, Kobe would have been like, ‘I'm shooting for whatever I can get.’ And to be in that conversation as your idol is what to me makes it, it gives me one of those things where I'm appreciative because it's my idol. It's somebody who I grew up watching the game. Like, I grew up watching him, like understanding what he stood for. And that man was…he will tell you, ‘I'm chasing Jordan. Whatever record he's trying to get, I'm trying to break it.’ And obviously, I got the opportunity to do that.”
Dan: “And I think because people love Kobe so much, that bothered them more that, who are you to do that to our Kobe? And here he is, your idol… And you're right. There's no way Kobe would say, ‘Hey, you got to 81, stop.’ He'd be like, ‘No, keep going, go for 90 if you can.’ I mean, that was his mentality.”
Bam: “Exactly. And like I said, if the dead could talk, I firmly believe he'd be like, ‘Congratulations, young fella.’ Like, ‘You did something I thought nobody could even reach for the next 40, 50 years.’”