Bam Adebayo’s 83 points stun the NBA — and his High Point high school coach
Tuesday night, when Bam Adebayo was thrilling the sports world by scoring 83 points in an NBA game, Brandon Clifford, his former high school coach at High Point Christian School, was out jogging.
As Adebayo kept scoring, Clifford’s phone kept lighting up with text messages. Only he didn’t know what was going on.
Everyone was sending him some version of the same message:
Are you watching Bam right now?
“I was like, ‘What is going on?’” Clifford said. “Everybody was like, ‘Have you seen Bam?’ Like what? I was worried he’d gotten hurt or something. But next thing you know I get a text and somebody says he’s got 70 points.”
Clifford knew how big that was.
In the history of the NBA, three players have scored exactly 70 points in a game: Joel Embiid, Devin Booker and Wilt Chamberlain.
But Adebayo, now 28 years old, had 70 points with more than seven minutes to play
Clifford was running in the dark through his neighborhood, and as the text messages started to pile up, he began to search on his phone for a way to watch.
He found a YouTuber who was live-streaming the game, and Clifford watched as he high-tailed it home.
By the time Clifford got in front a television, Adebayo had passed seven NBA players who had scored more than 70 points in a single game — Chamberlain (78, 73 twice and 72), Luka Dončić and David Thompson (73 each), plus Donovan Mitchell, Damian Lillard, David Robinson and Elgin Baylor, who each scored 71 in a game.
Then Clifford saw the free throws that got Adebayo to 83 points, past Kobe Bryant’s historic 81-point night in January 2006.
“It was kind of surreal to watch,” Clifford said, “because that’s not his personality. He’s not a guy that’s going out there looking to score 83 in the game. But, you know, he has his opportunity and he took advantage of it. It’s cool to see. I’m happy for him.”
A high school LeBron James?
Adebayo was already a North Carolina high school prodigy before he transferred to High Point Christian, near Greensboro, for his senior year of high school.
As a junior, he averaged 32.2 points and 21 rebounds per game for 1A Northside High, a public school in Pinetown, a city of less than 200 people in Beaufort County, which sits 50 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean.
After his junior season of high school, Adebayo joined future N.C. State and NBA player Dennis Smith on Team Loaded North Carolina, an adidas-sponsored travel team that helped Adebayo land spots in the National Basketball Players Association Top 100 camp and the 2015 Under Armour Elite 24 game, where was named MVP.
By then, Adebayo’s family was considering transferring the 5-star phenom to a bigger high school program in a bigger city, and they visited Clifford at High Point Christian.
“Through some AAU (travel ball) connections, he knew some kids that were transferring in,” Clifford said. “He had a lot of options. We had some meetings, but it kind of drug on during the summer. I really didn’t know what he was going to do until they announced it. We had a good team coming in. He obviously made us a lot better. And, you know, I think he wanted a normal school and not do to the prep school thing. He wanted to be close enough where he could see his mom. It was one of those right time at the right place things — for him and us.”
High Point Christian, which had 10 Division I prospects, was a heavy favorite to win the private school state championship, sitting atop the toughest classification, public or private, in North Carolina.
Adebayo had 22 points and 17 rebounds in his first game. He had 26 points and 14 rebounds over Cypress Lakes (TX) High, which featured his future Kentucky roommate and teammate De’Aaron Fox, who now plays for the Spurs.
In his senior high school season, Adebayo averaged 18.9 points, 13 rebounds, 1.4 blocks and 1.5 assists and led his team to the state championship game, where it lost for the second time that season to Charlotte’s Providence Day School.
The Chargers, featuring future Charlotte Hornet Grant Williams and future Kansas Jayhawks’ All-American Devon Dotson, beat Adebayo’s team in the final, 67-53, in front of sold-out crowd in Raleigh that included UNC coach Roy Williams. Trey Wertz, who played in college at Notre Dame, led the Chargers with 25 points, six rebounds and six assists.
After the championship game, Adebayo earned the state’s top basketball honor, being named Mr. Basketball, and he played in the McDonald’s All-American game and the Jordan Brand Classic.
“What I remember of him back then,” Clifford said of Adebayo, “was the way he moved at his size. It’s not normal. I said this when he was in high school, and people kind of laughed, but he’s a LeBron James type of athlete, as far as running, jumping, like lateral movement. At his size, it’s just unbelievable how athletic he is and how strong he is.”
Olympic medals and making history
After high school, Adebayo played one season at Kentucky, with Fox, before being taken 14th overall by the Miami Heat in the 2017 NBA draft.
In nine years with the Heat, Adebayo has been a two-time Olympic gold medalist, a three-time NBA all-star and five team NBA all-defense pick. He’s helped Miami reach the NBA finals in 2020 and 2023.
Clifford saw an NBA Finals game in Miami three years ago as Adebayo’s guest.
But nothing Clifford — who just finished his fifth season at Caldwell Academy, a private school in Greensboro — ever saw from Adebayo would have prepared him for Tuesday night.
Adebayo scored the second-most points in NBA history, only topped by Chamberlain, who had 100 in a game in 1962.
“This is a special moment,” Adebayo said. “It’s Wilt, me, then Kobe, which sounds crazy.”
Adebayo, who is averaging 17.5 points per game this season, had 31 in the first quarter and 43 at halftime. With 22 seconds left in the third quarter, he broke LeBron James’ Heat franchise record of 62 points.
For the game, Adebayo made 36 of 43 free throws — the most free throws made and attempted in an NBA game. His 22 3-point shot attempts tied for the third-most in league history. And Adebayo made 20-of-43 shot attempts.
“Obviously, my teammates were very geeked at halftime,” Adebayo said. “So for me, it was just remaining calm and remaining locked in and understanding that I can go for something special. I didn’t think it was going to be 83.”
At home, in Greensboro, his old high school coach couldn’t help but smile as he watched it all.
“If anybody deserves his day, it’s Bam Adebayo,” Clifford said. “He’s just a phenomenal human being. He’s so unselfish and people really discount how offensively talented he is. He’s just so gifted. So for him to have a night where he’s the most offensively explosive payer in the league, it’s just really cool. You know, I figured he would be in the record books for a lot of things, but not most points in a game.
“So, yeah, that’s just really awesome.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 2:42 PM.
