Throughout his 20-year career in the NBA, Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant had some jaw-dropping performances on the basketball floor. Some of those performances defied belief from his 62-point game in three quarters against the Dallas Mavericks in which he outscored an entire team to his incredible 60-point finale against the Utah Jazz, where he left it all out on the floor.
Of all the remarkable individual feats the Lakers legend was able to accomplish in purple and gold, the five-time NBA champion coming 19 points shy of matching Wilt Chamberlain's single-game scoring record may have been the most unbelievable. Wilt scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors back on March 2, 1962, setting the bar incredibly high for the dominant scorers to come.
Although Chamberlain's record still stands the test of time and may never be broken, Bryant's 81 points on Jan. 22, 2006 against the Toronto Raptors was the closest any NBA player has gotten to that seemingly unbreakable record. Fourteen years later, the question remains whether any player in the NBA today or in the future can match or surpass Kobe's 81.
During Bryant's final season with the Lakers, I asked Kobe that very question and got an interesting answer from the future Hall of Famer.
Ironically enough, almost a year later, Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns came very close to Kobe's career-high. Booker may be one of the more talented young players in the league today, but he didn't seem like a candidate to put up 70 points in a game.
However, that's exactly what the Kentucky product was able to accomplish on March 24 of 2017 against the Boston Celtics. Booker shocked the NBA world with his scoring explosion at the expense of the Celtics. Only five other players in NBA history had scored more with Elgin Baylor, David Robinson, David Thompson, Bryant, and Chamberlain sitting ahead of Booker.
With the game changing drastically since Bryant's 81 in 2006 with an emphasis on three-point shooting, the opportunities for players in today's league to have these high-scoring performances has increased. Houston Rockets superstar James Harden currently averaging a league-leading 36.9 points per game during the 2019-20 NBA season, is a perfect example of the evolution of the game.
Harden has scored 40 or more points 16 times this season with five games of 50 or more and one game where he notched 60 points. The one-time NBA MVP is making it look easy on a nightly basis and showing that reaching 80-plus points might not be out of the realm of possibility.
Another NBA star that has shown a remarkable scoring ability this season is Portland Trail Blazers guard, Damian Lillard. The 29-year-old may not be averaging anywhere near Harden's points per game (27.9), but he can put on a show on any given night the same way Harden can as he proved by lighting up the Golden State Warriors for 61 earlier this week.
Scoring in the NBA is just different in this era. Three-point shooting dominates the game with players like Harden and Lillard able to put up 40, 50, or 60 points on any given night without drawing attention or amazement that it did during Kobe's era.
To put it into perspective, only 26 players in NBA history have scored 60 points in a game. That's a small number considering how many players have played in this league, but what is more remarkable is that seven of those 26 are still actively playing in the NBA today.
LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kemba Walker, and Klay Thompson join Lillard, Booker, and Harden as the active players in the league to score 60 during their career. That number is bound to rise, and with the way the game is played today, we could easily see more players added to this list as early as the second half of this NBA season.
As for whether a player in today's game can match or surpass Kobe Bryant's 81 points, it is only a matter of time. The stars have yet to align for a star player like Giannis Antetounmpo, Anthony Davis, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, or some of the aforementioned elite scorers in the NBA, but Kobe's 81 may not stand for much longer as the best scoring performance in the modern era.
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