Sorry Bam. It's not you, it's the System.

At approximately 4:42 minutes left in the second quarter of tonight’s Nuggets vs Rockets game, Houston center Alperen Sengun was called for a 5-second back-to-the-basket violation. The violation occurs when an offensive player dribbles with his back to the goal for longer than five seconds and is below the foul line extended. Aaron Gordon’s STOUT defense provided a dead ball turnover for Denver. For more on the rule, check out: NBA Video Rule Book.

Where did this rule come from? Sir Charles Barkley. The NBA instituted the rule in 1999. An era dominated by Shaq, Chuck, Hakeeem, and Karl Malone. Has it been called since? Who knows. Did the refs blow the whistle too much in Bam Adebayo’s 83 point performance? Well, let’s find out…

Bam. Adebayo. Good dude. Hate that he got mixed up in all this. Hate that he scored 83 points in an NBA game and the whole thing was a farce. It’s divisive, sure. Crazy that hosting an NBA game, where one team is doing everything in their power to lose, yields a sideshow where the other team does everything in their power to break a scoring record held in PRETTY HIGH REGARD BY THOSE OF US WHO GREW UP IN THE GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA DURING THE KOBE ERA.

Being serious for minute, this (and many other instances) are what happens when a league turns over a quarter of its teams to tanking. Why are they still playing the games? The Wizards are killing me. Ignore yesterday’s debacle. Do you know what happened in their previous game? Washington fell to a basketball team from New Orleans by 20pts. Starting forward Bilal Coulibaly went 1-12 from the field and finished with 5 points. 1-12. Coulibaly turned around for 35 minutes against the Heat and improved by going 2-7.

The disappointment connected to Bam’s performance is that the league is slipping away from us. Every post-January game featuring one tanking team is liable to turn into a glorified All-Star game. And everyone hates the All-Star game. No one is asking for Bam Adebayo to score 83 points. They’re not even asking the Wizards to win. Instead, we’d rather see the Wizards play their two best players (Anthony Davis and Trae Young). It’d be great to surround them with 2-3 competitive Youngs. Guys that are being actively coached into pros. Not this list:

- Anthony Gill, Will Riley, Sharife Cooper, Jaden Hardy

Would it hurt to have another couple veterans out there? No. Perhaps they could coax 10 (at most) competitive defensive minutes. And if that ended in a loss, then so be it. This exercise of sitting the only guy with a prayer of stopping Bam (Alex Sarr) after 20 minutes is embarrassing. And it’s going to happen night after night after night. If something awesome happens in your league, it shouldn’t be immediately dismissed or discounted. It should be celebrated. People should be re-watching every point of Bam’s performance, but no one’s going to bother watching 36 foul shots go in because a bunch of 190lb 20yr olds had to try and stop the Heat’s biggest bruiser. No one wants to see that shit.