Kobe's Big Night

Kobe Bryant and 81 points are now forever linked. It sounds like something that would happen in a week of basketball games, or maybe for the high-scoring Bryant a mere two games (He had been averaging 40-plus points in his last nine games). But that is not what happened. He scored 81 points in one game on Sunday January 22, putting him second all-time in single-game scoring behind only the incredible 100-point performance of Wilt Chamberlain. I'm still dumbfounded by what Bryant did on Sunday night. When I first saw the story I was glancing through headlines on Yahoo Sports, and quite frankly, I thought it was a mistake. I thought there was no possible way anybody could score that many points in a game with the talent that is in the NBA today. When I looked at the box score, it looked even more like a joke being played by the Yahoo staff. I am accustomed to seeing big numbers in box scores, players scoring in the 40's, 50's, and even rarely in the 60's, but to see Bryant with an "81" next to his name, it seemed like a dream, it couldn't be real. Kobe's night has been talked about being better than Chamberlain's 100-point onslaught. Some people feel that because Chamberlain was such a massive man (7'1" 280 pounds) in an era when nobody was that big, and the three-second-lane violation did not yet exist, that Bryant's barrage was a better performance. I disagree with that notion. Chamberlain and Bryant were in the same class when they had their huge nights, nobody on the court could cover either one of them, Chamberlain because of his size and inside skill, Bryant because of his quickness and jump-shooting ability. The fact is Chamberlain scored more points, his night was better, but that doesn't take anything away from Bryant's performance. It is one of the most spectacular offensive shows put on in NBA history, and will be remembered right alongside Wilt Chamberlain's performance for as long as scoring is a statistic in the NBA.

Publish Date: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 in the Missourian.