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‘Unselfish’ Bam Adebayo’s 83-point game won’t be enough until Heat’s championship path realized
“Who would have thought three, four years ago that I would have been there in that moment capturing the time and the picture that Bam Adebayo scored 62 [points] to beat LeBron James and then 83 to beat Kobe Bryant.”
Those are the words of Latrelle Yancey – a self-taught videographer who went from learning how to shoot pictures and video on his iPhone to capturing one of the greatest individual performances in NBA history from courtside.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Yancey now resides in South Beach where he is the professional photographer for Miami Heat star Edrice ‘Bam’ Adebayo.
He credits his good friend John Lewis and Adebayo’s manger and mentor Kevin Graves for giving him the opportunity to be in the position he finds himself in today.
A proud graduate of Harris Stowe State University, a HBCU in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as an avid user of ‘YouTube University’, Yancey could never have envisioned when he founded 2 LYVE MEDIA LLC back in 2018 that he would uproot his whole life thousands of miles across the country to Miami.
Now he spends the majority of his time traveling to all 30 arenas around the NBA, so naturally was inside the Kaseya Center on March 10 – a day now etched into NBA history books after Adebayo erupted for 83 points against the Washington Wizards, surpassing the late, great Kobe Bryant who once dropped 81 points on the Toronto Raptors back in 2006.
While many basketball fans were gripped to their seats as history unfolded in front of their very eyes, Yancey was mere steps away from the action battling some nerves as he sought to ‘bottle’ up the three-time All-Star’s legacy moment into a single, timeless frame.
“I promise in my brain and my body, I just kept saying, ‘make sure I’m focused on Bam so that I can get the clean shot,'” Yancey said in an exclusive conversation with talkSPORT.
“When it happened and I looked at my camera and I saw that everything was clear… I was like, ‘I got it’. That was the vision in my brain that I had about Bam getting that record.”
Adebayo now sits behind only Wilt Chamberlain in the history books, who set the record with a 100-point outing back in 1962, though no video footage of this game exists.
Sacrifices to make a superstar and surpass LeBron James
Adebayo’s route to history – which saw him subsequently earn plaudits from NBA legends including Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan – did not happen overnight.
A consensus five-star recruit in the class of 2016 – ranked No. 5 on the SCNEXT 100 list – Adebayo committed to play for John Calipari at Kentucky despite the likes of Kansas, Auburn and Missouri all having sent offers to the 6-foot-9 power forward.
After averaging 13.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 1.5 blocks in 38 games for the Wildcats as a freshman, he was drafted by the Heat with the 14th overall pick of the 2017 NBA Draft.
But Adebayo’s impact on the league wasn’t seismic – nor immediate – by any means.
Coming off the bench in the first two seasons of his pro career, it wasn’t until the 2019-2020 season when Adebayo began to cement his role as a leader in the Heat’s frontcourt, the same season that he earned the first of his three All-Star nods.
Since then, Adebayo has honed his craft and expanded his all-around game, and has gone on to average 19.3 points, 9.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.2 steals over the past six regular seasons.
Prior to March 10, the 28-year-old’s previous career-high in scoring was 41 points, back in 2021 against the Brooklyn Nets.
In fact, the total from his two highest-scoring games of his career (41 and 38) totaled less than the 83 he scored against Washington (79).
Whilst Yancey noticed early on that Adebayo was feeling himself out on the court – dropping 31 points in the first quarter alone – even the closest people in the power forward/center’s life couldn’t have foreseen just what was witnessed out on the hardwood.
After the first quarter, I was like, ‘man, he had a monster quarter.’ Since I’ve been working for him, I haven’t seen him go off like that,” Yancey revealed.
“So I was like, ‘okay, that was a good first quarter. He balled out. Let’s do it’. I kind of saw this look in his eye… I can kind of tell in his mannerisms when something has clicked or when he’s ready to go.
“At halftime… one of the media staff members was telling me, ‘if he gets 62 he can break LeBron’s franchise record.’
“I’m like ‘I’m not going to text him. … I’m sure he’s superstitious.’ I’m a little superstitious and I’m not telling him anything because I don’t want to throw him off… in the back of my mind, I was thinking to myself, ‘honestly, he’s got a chance to break LeBron’s franchise record’.
“It was a nervousness like, ‘I don’t want to miss the shot. I don’t want to miss the moment’. I kept looking at my camera, trying to make sure everything was focused, and position myself to be in a place where I can be able to capture that moment.
“Because I knew at the end of the day, this was going to be important to him if he breaks this record. And the closer it got, the more realistic it became, and I just wanted to be at least one of those people that was able to get that shot when he broke the record.”
Perhaps Yancey’s most iconic image was when he captured the moment that Adebayo surpassed James’ Heat franchise record for most points scored in a single game (62), doing so in typical LeBron James fashion – with an emphatic slam dunk in front of the home crowd.
Energy in the Kaseya Center was unpalpable
For the 14,056 fans who were in attendance at the game, including Adebayo’s mom and his partner WNBA superstar A’ja Wilson, not a single one of them entered the arena knowing they would leave having witnessed history.
“One of the most exciting things for me was watching the reaction of everybody—from his teammates to his coach, to being able to get a glimpse of his mom standing up and watching her excitement,” Yancey said.
“I don’t know if there’s a feeling I can express to where everybody wanted to see him succeed; you started hearing the buzz around, everyone whispering, ‘He can break 81’.
“We were just following this thing play-by-play, hoping he makes every shot because, at the end of the day, everybody there wants to be a part of history.
“Nobody thought playing against the Wizards on March 10 was going to be a historical night, but for the ones in the building, it was a sense of nervousness and a sense of, ‘I can’t wait till he hits it’. … It was a pivotal moment. It was historical.”
Although there were some initial concerns over whether head coach Erik Spoelstra would take Adebayo out the game, the long-time Heat coach ultimately recognized – and allowed – his star forward to chase the moment, doing so as a gesture to honor the player’s commitment to the cause.
“People don’t realize that Spo understands that Bam sacrifices so much for the team. He gives so much to the community. He gives so much to the Heat organization,” Yancey added.
“I think Spo was excited to see him accomplish that record. For a second, maybe in the back of our minds, we probably thought after he broke LeBron’s record, maybe he would have called it a day. But they still had a basketball game to play and win.
“On top of that, Bam was just having a phenomenal game. And I think it just shows you what type of person Spo is and that he believes in his players.
“Yeah Bam scored 83 points. But what better way to go out than to say, ‘Hey, I coached the guy who scored 83 points in the game on March 10 2026’. …
“I just think Spo did what Spo does, man. He looks out for his team and his players and he did what he felt was right. And because of that, he was able to be a part of history as well.”
Profile of a champion as he chases legendary Heat status
In his near decade-long career, Adebayo has also been part of two NBA Finals runs, although coming out on the losing side on both occasions to the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets, respectively.
Having come so close to getting his hands on the Larry O’Brien trophy, the hunger to finally become an NBA champion would mean far more to an ‘unselfish’ Adebayo than his record-busting night.
“Every time I’m with Bam, the one thing that he talks about more than anything is winning the championship,” he added.
“He’s had a lot of historical moments, a lot of accolades. All-Stars, gold medals in the Olympics. But I think more than anything, he wants to win a championship.
“Bam doesn’t go into a game thinking of what he can do individually. He goes into a game thinking of what he can do to help the team. And I think that 83 point moment was just an opportunity for his team to give that back to him. …
“Everybody that knows basketball recognizes that he does it all. He’s a great teammate, he’s a great captain, he is a great defender.
“Bam is one of those dudes that don’t like to miss games either and it shows in his work ethic. When I’m with him and we go work out and he works out four times a day in the summer. Those are the things that people don’t see.
“And he does that because he loves the game of basketball, but he also wants to do everything that he can to help the team. … He thinks team- first and then he thinks me second. … But more than anything, I know that Bam wants to win a championship for Miami.”
Yancey believes Adebayo’s name will one day be in the conversation of the upper echelon of Heat heroes, if not already. Names like James, Chris Bosh, Udonis Haslem, Alonzo Mourning and Dwyane Wade –the lone Heat star to have a statue.
“I’ve got to rank him up there with the greats,” Yancey exclaimed. “I think he’s gonna be a guy at one point that’s gonna have a statue.
“I think he’s gonna be a guy that’s gonna have his jersey retired. And I also think he’s gonna be a guy that’s gonna be a Hall of Famer when his career is over and done. …
“That’s not to say that he won’t ever get his championship because he’s gonna continue to strive for it. And I just think for him, that’s just gonna be the icing on the cake.”
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