Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

I wasn’t planning on writing anything until I had a 2026 NWSL game in the books but this next piece of news is so insane that I needed to write about it.

It is truly something that basically none of us watching sports has ever seen.

Here’s the Table of Contents if you want to flip around.

Table of Contents

• The Most Curious Thing This Week: BAM!

  • The Stat Line: Plenty of NBA Records

  • History Before Our Eyes: The Best Game on Videotape

• My Reporting

  • MS NOW: Shawn Harris Surprises in GA Special Election

  • NWSL: Haley Carter Meets the Press

• Something Good I Ate: Fish in the 'Hood

And here’s Peach!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s… BAM!

Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo scored 83 points in last night’s 150-129 win at home against the Washington Wizards. 83 points! In one game! EIGHTY-THREE!!!

That is the second-highest total for a single game in NBA history, trailing only Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962.

Adebayo’s performance is an absolute marvel, extraordinary in both its statistical underpinnings and its historical context.

The Stat Line

This stat line’s exceptional nature is only matched by how unexpected it is. Adebayo’s career high entering Tuesday’s game was 41 points. He had 43 at halftime!

Adebayo set a Heat record by scoring 31 points in the first quarter. No player in the team’s 38-year history had done that, and only three players in NBA history ever scored more in a single quarter.

He finished the night 36-43 from the free throw line. 36 made free throws in one game is an NBA record, topping the record of 28 set by Wilt Chamberlain in his 100-point game and later matched by Adrian Dantley. 43 free throw attempts in one game is also an NBA record, besting the previous mark of 39, set twice by Dwight Howard.

He shot 7-22 from 3-point range. And had he been a little more accurate from downtown, we might be talking about a second-ever 100-point game. Despite the NBA’s three-point boom, there have been only four occasions where a player has taken more 3-point shots in a game. Klay Thompson holds that record, with 24.

And postgame, Adebayo’s girlfriend, WNBA star A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, joined Adebayo at the podium. Fittingly enough, Wilson is the co-holder of the WNBA record for most points in a game, with 53 in a 2023 game against the Atlanta Dream. (Dallas Wings center Liz Cambage also scored 53 in a game in 2018.)

With Adebayo doubling his career high, Wilson posted to Threads, “Welp won’t have the highest career high in the house anymore [crying emoji] but at least it gives me something to go after [smiling with hand covering mouth emoji]”

Overall, Adebayo finished 20-43 from the field, 7-22 from 3, 36-43 from the line, with 9 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 2 blocks, 5 turnovers… and 83 points!!

History Before Our Eyes

I probably couldn’t have been more than about three or four years old when I learned about Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game. I was obsessed with basketball at a very young age and that was a piece of basketball history that books, broadcasts and VHS tapes would constantly mention.

“Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game” is right up there with “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492” or “Stop, Drop and Roll” in the category of things I learned as a kid.

It’s so perfect, so round. 100 points exactly.

And yet, when you think about it, it’s absurd. Basically impossible. One player scoring 100 points in one game. Until the recent upswing in offensive output, entire teams wouldn’t consistently score 100 in a game!

It leads you to wonder… could it be fake?

Wilt’s 100-point game is basically the NBA’s equivalent of Bigfoot. It comes from a time when the NBA was a sporting afterthought, still far behind college basketball in popularity.

When the Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962, in front of an announced attendance of 4,124 fans in a glorified barn in Hershey, Pennsylvania, it was a late-season matchup set to have little impact on the league standings.

The game was not televised. All video footage of the game is lost, and only part of the audio of the game’s radio broadcast exists.

Younger NBA fans have spread a conspiracy claiming that the game did not exist, or that Wilt did not score 100. It is clear from newspaper coverage, the radio broadcast, and other archival accounts that we still have that Wilt did score 100 points that night.

Also Pablo Torre proved it, and if he proves it, you know it’s real.

Arguably the main artifact from the game is a photo of Chamberlain holding a piece of paper at his locker that says “100” on it. ESPN reported in 2012, on the 50^th anniversary of the game, that Paul Vathis, the Associated Press photographer who took the photo, was not even there on assignment. Vathis was there as a fan with his son but got his camera at halftime when he realized Chamberlain could set a record.

All of that is to say that, beyond the (up to) 4,124 fans in Hershey, Pennsylvania on a cold, rainy Friday night in 1962 and a couple dozen players and team staff from the NBA’s dark ages, nobody has ever seen an NBA player score 100 points in one game.

Chamberlain had scored 78 in a game in 1961, which was long the second-highest total. David Thompson scored 73 in a game in 1978 to set a non-Chamberlain record.

But entering Tuesday night, the only other time a player topped 78 was on January 22, 2006, when Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in a 122-104 win over the Toronto Raptors.

This is probably an overload of numbers, but to be clear—the highest-scoring game with footage available, that anyone could watch, was Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game. 

What Bam Adebayo did last night was put up the most points in an NBA game on tape. In the NBA’s 80-year history, the highest-scoring performance that can actually be watched, or that anyone ever saw on video, came last night.

And he even held up the piece of paper.

My Reporting

MS NOW

Tuesday was also an election night! Voters in Georgia’s 14^th congressional district turned out for a special election to fill the House seat held by Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned in January after a falling-out with President Trump, including over Greene’s early support for a bill requiring the Justice Department to release its files tied to notorious child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

Georgia’s special elections are done in the “jungle primary” setup, where every candidate from every party runs in one election. If somebody gets a majority of the vote, they win, but if not, the top two candidates head to a runoff election four weeks later.

This district, the reddest in the state and one where Trump won by 37 points in 2024, is not one where Democrats usually contend. But a broad Republican field with a dozen candidates, including three with notable chunks of support, opened the door for Shawn Harris, a moderate Democrat and Army veteran, to advance to next month’s runoff.

Harris, who ran in the district in 2024 and won 35% of the vote, bumped that number to 37%, good enough to finish two points ahead of Republican and Trump endorsee Clayton Fuller.

Harris and Fuller will face off in a runoff election next month. Even with an overperformance by Harris in many parts of the district, Democrats earned just under 40% of the vote in Tuesday’s election. That means that Fuller, the Republican, would be the prohibitive favorite. 

Harris joined The Briefing with Jen Psaki last night, in an interview I helped produce (and that aired shortly before I started to follow Bam Adebayo’s crazy scoring output.)

Jen asked how the results compared with his expectations.

“This is exactly where we thought we were going to be,” Harris said.

“We also said, in turning to our team, is guess what? We want to make sure that tonight, we win the election by getting the most votes. And we did that, and we’re gonna get even more votes as more votes come in later on tonight.”

While a first-place finish in the runoff won’t send Harris to Congress just yet, he pointed to his success as a sign that the right candidate can do well even in extremely hostile political territory.

“A coalition of Democrats, independents, and yes, Republicans, can all get behind a candidate like me and we can actually bring about change here in Northwest Georgia.”

The winner of the runoff on April 7^th will head to Congress to serve for the remainder of 2026 but won’t be able to rest on their laurels for long. The primaries for the race to serve the next term for Georgia’s 14^th district are in May.

NWSL

Over the weekend, I had the chance to head to The Anthem in DC for the Washington Spirit’s preseason Spirit Fest event. The team said they sold out the event, filling a venue that fits a few thousand people.

It was an event full of programming and opportunities for fans. Players came on stage and participated in talks about their off-field lives, and fans could meet and take pictures with players in meet and greets. Players even participated in a fashion show tied to team merchandise.

Backstage, reporters had a chance to ask questions to players and front office staff.

A few players gave injury updates. Midfielder Deb Abiodun said she had suffered an injury in preseason and was working her way back. Defender Kate Wiesner, who pulled out of US national team camp with an injury, said she was “trending in the right direction” and that leaving camp was a proactive move to keep her healthy for the regular season, which starts at home on Friday against the Portland Thorns.

Haley Carter, the team’s president of soccer operations, had an extended sitdown with the gathered press, answering an array of questions. The team set up a virtual chat with her in the offseason, but this was one of the first times reporters had the chance to speak with her in person.

Carter has a heckuva pre-Spirit resume. A four-year soccer player at the United States Naval Academy, Carter spent nearly eight years in the United States Marine Corps after graduation, with two combat deployments to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

After leaving active duty, Carter spent four seasons in the NWSL as a backup goalkeeper for the Houston Dash but never appeared in a game.

She spent several years as an assistant coach for the Afghanistan women’s national team, a tenure which ended after she helped several players stand up to sexual abuse by members of the Afghanistan Football Federation. The resulting FIFA investigation led to a lifetime ban for the federation’s president. In 2021, she helped facilitate the evacuation of players and their families out of the country during the chaotic Taliban takeover and U.S. military departure. 

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner appointed Carter to his Commission Against Gun Violence in 2018 and in 2021, the Houston City Council appointed her to the City of Houston Women’s Commission.

And in 2023, she took over as general manager and VP of soccer operations at the Orlando Pride, helping the longtime league doormat win both the NWSL Championship and Shield in 2024 by spotting game-changing talent, including signing the Pride’s star striker Barbra Banda.

After a second straight title game loss, the Spirit brought Carter onboard to fill the vacancy left by GM Mark Krikorian stepping down to enter what now looks like it may be a retirement.

Carter shed some light on the Spirit’s first-ever loan to fellow DC club DC Power. The Spirit loaned backup goalkeeper Sara Wojdelko to the Power last month, but Carter said that she took some pride in setting up what she called a “really special deal.”

“Essentially the way that it works is she spends her time in our environments. So she trains with us every day, her housing remains the same so it’s consistent. She trains with them one match day minus one and she gets games with them. For goalkeepers, especially young goalkeepers, the best way for them to develop is to get game time,” Carter said.

Although Carter has been in the job for just a few months, she has helmed several major personnel moves, including the re-signing of star forward Trinity Rodman to a three-year contract, and trading star midfielder Croix Bethune to the Kansas City Current for a total of $1 million spread over a couple of different forms of cash. 

Carter acknowledged that the move to deal Bethune, a 24-year-old rising star, was likely a surprise to a lot of fans. Bethune requested the move but that did not become public knowledge until after the deal was announced and Carter was adamant in defending the rights of players to decide they want to move elsewhere.

“When an opportunity like that is presented, I will do whatever I can in my power to find a solution that works for everyone,” Carter said.

Other notable moves since the Spirit announced Carter’s arrival in early December have included the signing of 18-year-old Paraguayan star Claudia Martínez, who the club acquired by paying a reported $950,000 fee to Club Olimpia in the Paraguayan league, and an extension for reigning NWSL Defender of the Year Tara Rudd (née McKeown.) That deal runs through 2028 and includes club options to extend the deal for 2029 and 2030. 

Carter directly acknowledged that sending Bethune off to Kansas City helped free up space for both of those moves. 

“The reality is, Croix’s transfer fee covered Claudia Martínez, and then turned around and we used some of the additional money that was left over to re-sign Tara,” Carter said.

Despite the major fee for the 18-year-old Martínez, Carter urged patience, explaining that Martínez is from a very rural part of Paraguay and even only began to learn Spanish a few years ago. Off-field development, Carter said, is the priority over setting immediate on-field expectations.

“We are not putting any expectations on her. She is a long-term project, for lack of a better word, but her potential is exceptional.”

Something Good I Ate

We’re going to the ‘hood for this one. Specifically to Fish in the Neighborhood, a counter-only seafood joint in the Park View neighborhood of Washington, DC, just a few blocks south of the Georgia Avenue-Petworth Metro stop.

The shop’s sign has had the letters for “neighbor” scratched out, and when Bill, the owner, answers the phone, he’ll just say “Fish in the Hood.” It’s been around since 1998 and survived a 2017 fire that shut it down for over a year and a 2021 collapsed lung for Bill. In articles he jokes that in the name, the “neighbor” is silent.

He didn’t introduce himself, but a couple of framed local newspaper clippings mention his name, as does the sign out front, which includes the small note that it’s “Bill’s Seafood Kitchen,” right next to the phone number and the unattributed quote saying it’s the “Best Kept Secret.”

Fish in the Hood is more of an open secret, with neighborhood residents flowing in and out and walls so thin that dogs interrupt efforts to take orders over the phone by barking at the bright red Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man outside. 

This is the kind of place where availability is tight. Come in the afternoon and you might not be able to get the crab cake or the sweet potato pie.

But if you want it and it’s still there, Bill will reach into the plexiglass fridge and pull the fish you want off a bed of ice, weigh it, and get the folks in the kitchen to cook it for you. 

It might take 10-15 minutes but if it’s not super busy, he’ll probably start poking your mind, like he did to me. He wondered if I had thoughts on the war, referring to the undeclared U.S. war effort on Iran. He was pretty skeptical of the reasoning and similarly wary about Bitcoin and the FBI’s handling of the search for Today Show host Savannah Guthrie’s mom Nancy Guthrie.

With one TV showing soccer and the other showing YouTube videos about news and the economy, it was like Bill reached into my brain after reaching into the fridge.

My wife and I went and decided to sample several things, including some stuff we didn’t usually like. That meant that some things we got were made well and would absolutely please people with a taste for them, but that we realized we didn’t love whiting, even when it was fried, or collard greens all that much. If you do, you’ll love them at Fish in the Hood, though. 

We fell in love with the fried catfish. Absolutely immaculate and nowhere near the overwhelming fishy taste that you might get with whiting. 

I have fallen out of love with shrimp (too slimy, bad texture) but the grilled shrimp with cocktail sauce won both of us over, even my usually shrimp-averse self.

And the sides! I quite liked the mac n’ cheese, but which side was best? DC native and longtime NFL tight end Vernon Davis has the answer for us.

“Yams! Sweet potato yams!”

Fish in the Hood’s candied yams clear everything. They are just heavenly.

It’s cash only, as all good seafood joints are, but another trip to the ‘hood is in order soon.

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