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After scoring 81 points, could Bryant top Wilt's 100?
(Sports Illustrated)
Updated: 2006-01-24 08:38
Phil Jackson had seen enough. He had watched Kobe Bryant take plenty of
highlight-reel shots for one night, so with the game against the Raptors in hand
late in the fourth quarter he turned to assistant coach Frank Hamblen, who was
keeping stats on his clipboard. "I think I better take him out now," Jackson
told Hamblen. "I don't think you can," Hamblen said. "He has 77 points."
Out of my way: Kobe
Bryant outscored the Raptors all by himself in the second half. [Noah
Graham/Getty] |
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With that, Jackson, who had benched Bryant for six minutes in the second
quarter as the Lakers fell behind by 14 points, kept his superstar in the game a
little bit longer. "We stayed with it until he hit 80," said Jackson, who
finally pulled Bryant with 4.2 seconds left and gave him a hug as Bryant walked
toward the bench and raised his right hand to the sold-out Staples Center crowd,
which gave him a standing ovation.
"I couldn't even dream of this when I was a kid, not even in my dreams," said
Bryant, moments after getting a congratulatory call from Magic Johnson. "It's
tough to explain, it just happened man."
Anyone who watched the game will agree that Bryant's historic night sort of
just happened. It seemed like any other game as the Lakers trailed 63-49 at the
half. It was a situation that Bryant, who scored 26 points in the first half,
knew he needed to reverse if the Lakers were to break their two-game skid and
win for the first time since defeating Shaq and the Heat last week. "We have
four days off coming up here and I would have been sick as a dog if we'd lost
this game," Bryant said. "I just wanted to step up and inspire them to play a
better game, and it turned into something pretty special."
It wasn't until Bryant scored 27 points in the third quarter that this night
was anything special, and it wasn't until Bryant dropped 28 points in the fourth
quarter that it became legendary. Bryant's 55-point second half was not only
more than the entire Raptors team, which scored 41, but also it was the most
anyone had scored over two quarters in the NBA outside of Wilt Chamberlain's
100-point night on March 2, 1962, when he dropped 59 points in the second half.
Bryant's performance immediately brought comparisons to Chamberlain's
historic game in Hershey, Pa. After all, before Sunday no one other than
Chamberlain had scored more than 73 points in a game, and only four players had
hit the 70-point mark. And it didn't take long for the question to be asked:
"Could Kobe ever hit 100?"
"I don't know," Bryant said with a laugh. "That's unthinkable."
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