Really, there are only a few times in your life if you are a sports fan when there’s a “Did you see that game!” When you’re calling friends and demanding, “You’ve got to see this!”
Sunday night was one of those times, and Monday, the talk of the sports world was Kobe Bryant and his 81-point masterpiece that may have been the greatest individual game in the history of the NBA.
Maybe Billy Crystal will make a movie and call it “81!”
It may stand as one of those numbers like Joe DiMaggio’s 56 or Babe Ruth’s 60, numbers that every sports fan knows what they mean without saying any more.
The NBA was buzzing Monday about the game Lakers coach Phil Jackson said was the most remarkable game he’d seen.
“That was something to behold, another level,” said Jackson, who played against the likes of Jerry West, Oscar Robertson and, of course, Wilt Chamberlain, and coached Michael Jordan when he was at his scoring best with 69 points against the Cleveland Cavaliers on March 28, 1990.
There had been just nine games in NBA history of 70 points or more before Sunday and only Chamberlain’s 100-pointer in Hershey, Pa., on March 2, 1962, was more than 78. Bryant blew by all but Chamberlain’s century mark in an amazing 55-point second half in which he carried his team from an 18-point third-quarter deficit to an 18-point victory.
Perhaps no great player has been branded selfish and self-consumed–I believe unfairly–more than Bryant. But this was a game in which Bryant tried to share the ball and include his teammates, who were plain lousy. Lamar Odom couldn’t even score a field goal until there were about seven minutes left in the game.
There has been this ridiculous canard about Bryant that he doesn’t make teammates better. A player makes teammates better by enabling them to win the game. This Lakers roster without Bryant wouldn’t win 20 games. It’s easy, as Michael Jordan said when he was averaging 28 shots per game in 1986-87 (Bryant is averaging 27.7 now), to make players better when you’re playing with All-Stars, as Jordan eventually did. When you’re not, you draw the defense and carry the team to wins as best you can.
Also, I agree with Bryant: Enough of the Jordan comparisons.
Bryant was unavailable to the media Monday, but after the game Sunday perhaps his only somber moments amid a frenetic Staples Center crowd that was rocking like L.A. had been hit by another earthquake, Bryant virtually begged reporters to give up with the Jordan analogies when someone brought it up.
“I wish they’d stop,” Bryant lamented. “He was Michael Jordan and I’m Kobe Bryant. We’re different players. I wish people would let it go.”
Does every great baseball player have to be measured by Ruth, every football player by Walter Payton or Jim Brown, every hockey player by Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr? Bryant will remain an ambivalent figure not only because of the criminal case filed against him and the premature breakup with Shaquille O’Neal, but the personality deficit he retains.
People truly liked Mike. But don’t be fooled by the revisionist history. Jordan played with bad teams and took as many bad shots, looked off his teammates and was every bit as difficult to be around at times because of his similar competitiveness.
But they played in different eras in different circumstances.
Some will say Bryant had it easier because of the elimination of hand-checking and contact above the free-throw line in today’s rules. But there is a zone defense now, which makes it harder to penetrate, and defensive schemes are so much more sophisticated now with double teams and multiple options. Heck, the Raptors even tried a box-and-one at one point on a remarkably efficient Bryant.
He hit 28 of 46 field goals, including 7 of 13 threes, with 18 of 20 free throws after stopping a streak in that game in which he’d made 62 straight from the line.
Forget Jordan comparisons, this may have been a better game than Wilt’s 100.
Wilt’s Warriors scored 169 points in that game and Wilt played the entire 48 minutes. Bryant played just under 42 and shot a better percentage than Chamberlain, who was playing against 6-10 (maybe) Darrell Imhoff in an era when it was considered unmanly to double-team.
And Bryant is a guard!
It’s almost heresy to think of a guard being the player to challenge Wilt.
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Denver’s David Thompson was the only guard to score more than 70 with 73 in 1978.
Not to belittle Chamberlain, who was the game’s greatest scorer, but Bryant wasn’t exactly dunking and making layups. And Toronto wasn’t giving him anything. This was a highly contested game in which Bryant brought his team back from a big deficit and saved them from arguably a stunning embarrassment.
Late in the fourth quarter as Bryant was clearly aiming for 80, the Raptors were double-teaming him before the catch when he tried to post on the right elbow. Bryant came out for one pass and split the double with a behind-the-back dribble. He hit seven threes. He drove the baseline relentlessly and faded away in the paint for jumpers. He shook defenders for jumpers and faced up with threes. It all really seemed so effortless.
Every scorer who has had a big game has talked about the energy required.
Bryant was barely breathless after coming out of the game to a standing, chanting ovation in nothing-impresses-me Hollywood and doing interviews on the court.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Bryant admitted. “I wanted to step up and help us win this game and it turned into something special. Not even in my dreams. It’s something that just happened. To sit here and say that I grasp what happened tonight, I’d be lying.”
This will be considered for years. Unless, of course, Bryant betters it himself.
When Bryant scored 62 last month against Dallas and went out after the third quarter with Dallas having scored 61 points, no one thought they’d see better than that. Who knows now with Bryant, especially with an undertalented team Bryant is dragging to the playoffs.
And it’s not like this just started. In the last 15 games, Bryant has eight games of at least 40 with four of at least 50. He’s averaging 43.3 points in that span and 35.9 for the season while shooting his highest percentage from the field in four years.
He’s morphing from basketball player to video game.
“He’s the human joystick of basketball,” said rookie teammate Andrew Bynum.
Minnesota’s Wally Szczerbiak gushed: “I called my dad and said, `Are you watching this?'”
I was there for Jordan’s 69 and every big-game winner, and also was calling around Sunday after the third quarter and telling people, “He’s got 53.” Thank goodness for satellite TV.
It was a league abuzz Sunday night.
Jerry West, the man who drafted him, called it vindication.
Bryant said he wouldn’t frame the box score; he would leave that to his wife.
“I’ll look back at it one day when I have a pot belly and be happy she did it,” he said.
One hundred. Is it possible? Bryant laughed at first, but then later offered shyly, “I guess it’s possible for me.”
Bryant is not the best player ever in basketball. That will be long debated. But what he did Sunday may well have been the best game.
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NBA ALL-TIME SCORING AVERAGES
PLAYER YEAR AVG
1. Wilt Chamberlain 1961-62 50.4
2. Chamberlain 1962-63 44.8
3. Chamberlain 1960-61 38.4
4. Elgin Baylor 1961-62 38.3
5. Chamberlain 1959-60 37.6
6. Michael Jordan 1986-87 37.1
7. Chamberlain 1963-64 36.9
8. Bryant’s pace 2005-06 35.9
Source: STATS.
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Bryant vs. Jordan
Kobe Bryant scored 81 points Sunday in his 666th game. How his numbers compare with Michael Jordan’s through 666 games.
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BRYANT CATEGORY JORDAN
27 Age 30
10 Seasons 9
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15,436 Points 21,520
23.1 Per game avg. 32.3
3,426 Rebounds 4,213
2,955 Assists 3,929
964 Steals 1,812
45.2 FG pct. 51.6
81 High game 69
9 50-plus pts 26*
2 60-plus pts 4
3 NBA titles 2 (this number as published has
*-does not include been corrected in this text)
5 50-plus games in
the playoffs; Bryant
has none.
Source: NBA
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