Check the sports sections of the various publications on the Internet and they are all about throwbacks or blasts from the past.
I am no different from their sports writers/columnists. Aside from forecasting a potential resumption of “real” sports competitions around the world – the National Basketball Association has come up with a virtual 2k Players Only event and a playground-game H-O-R-S-E competition – we seek to relive past historic moments in world sports history, and perhaps also to refresh the younger generation on what they probably have missed through the decades.
My forte, of course, is about the NBA. So here’s one for our readers.
Phoenix All-Star guard Devin Booker, a five-year veteran who recently topped the NBA 2K tournament with a 2-0 win over Suns teammate Deandre Ayton in the best-of-three finals, was the most recent player to score 70 points in a regular-season game.
On March 24, 2017, the Boston Celtics bucked the 6-5 Booker’s 70 points to register a 130-120 victory over the visiting Suns. Booker thus became the sixth player in NBA history to collect 70 or more.
That offensive outburst by the University of Kentucky alum duplicated Wilt Chamberlain’s output for the 10th-highest individual score in NBA regular-season history.
Ahead of the 23-year-old Booker’s output were Chamberlain’s games of 100, 78, 73, 73, and 72, Kobe Bryant’s 81, David Thompson 73, Elgin Baylor’s 71 and David Robinson’s 71.
What was Michael Jordan’s career high? It was “only” 69 points.
The youngest ever to score 60 or 70 at age 20, Booker went 21-for-40 from the field, including 4-for-11 from the three-point area, and 24-for-26 from the free-throw line in 45 minutes of service.
There have been 11 instances of 70-point individual performances in NBA regular-season history. Six were delivered in a winning act while five came about in a losing cause.
Wilt Chamberlain chalked up 100 points when the Philadelphia Warriors (the harbinger of the San Francisco then Golden State Warriors) beat the New York Knicks, 169-147, on March 2, 1962 at Hershey, Pennsylvania for the highest single-game output in league annals.
Kobe Bryant netted 81 in leading the Los Angeles Lakers to a 122-104 victory over the Toronto Raptors on January 22, 2006 at the Staples Center for the second-best mark.
The third-highest score, Chamberlain’s 78 with the Philadelphia (now Golden State) Warriors, came in a 151-147 triple-overtime setback to the LA Lakers on December 8, 1961 at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
Both Chamberlain (October 1999) and Bryant (January 2020) have crossed the Great Beyond.
* * * * *
If not for the NBA shutdown (March 12) due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the final playdate of the 1,340-game regular season would have been held today (April 16, PH time).
Instead, 259 games have been wiped out. Whether the league will reschedule all those games is very doubtful, even assuming a resumption is being targeted in August.
Again, it’s the coronavirus that will dictate the NBA’s fate.