Chris Paul: I Wouldn’t Have Let Kobe Bryant Drop 81 on My Team

It’s been a little over 20 years since Kobe Bryant dropped the historic 81 points against the Toronto Raptors. Well, it’s not Wilt Chamberlain’s 100. Then again, nobody now knows what that game looked and felt like. So, Kobe’s 81 is the gold standard for the previous and this era, and possibly for many generations to come. Interestingly, if NBA legend Chris Paul had his way, the Lakers legend wouldn’t have even gotten close to that number.

Over the years, a fair amount of things have been said about that night. A bit of it has been LeBron James lying through his teeth about predicting the performance from Bryant on January 22, 2006. Sam Mitchell, Raptors’ coach on the night, has always sounded like a defeated man while talking about it. 

“I played every defense I could think of. I went all the way back to college defenses that were played against me. A box and 1. A triangle and 2. When’s the last time you heard someone play a triangle and 2? He would’ve had 81 against anyone that night,” Mitchell said once. And therein lies Paul’s problem. 

The former Clippers star, who was recently unceremoniously shown the door by the Clippers in what would have been his swan song season, believes somebody should have done something, even breaking a rule and fouling Kobe to stop him.

Paul argued that there’s been only one occasion during his entire career from 2005 to this season, when somebody had scored 50 points against a team he played on. He criticized defenses for allowing players to score 55-60-70 points in a single game.

“That game Kobe had 81, couldn’t be me. I’m ejected, I’ve done fouled out, something. What [are] we talking about, coach? I’m not guarding the other guys. We’re going to double-team him. Trap him. Let somebody else score,” said Paul.

It’s a brave statement from Paul. Hope he hasn’t forgotten that the Raptors were winning that game at halftime. They were 63-49, having played the best first half of their entire season up until that point. And Kobe had 26 points by then, which wasn’t anything out of the usual for a player of his reputation.

Then the second half began, and Kobe turned a shade of green like the Hulk in Harlem. Jalen Rose, Morris Peterson, Joey Graham, and José Calderón; they all tried. It just wasn’t enough.

As coach Mitchell put it, “he was pump-faking three, four times and then spinning opposite of the defense while shooting. I’m trying to figure out how he even had the balance to do that.”

The late Lakers star scored against eight defenders on that night. Sure, the Raptors were still a young-ish team at that point, but they were still pretty good, and Kobe just ran through them.

It wasn’t a fluke, either. There were signs that Kobe was on his way to something historic just weeks before it. He had scored 62 points against the Dallas Mavericks in three quarters.

Maybe Paul could have had his team foul Kobe and stop him, even put him out of the court for a few weeks after the game. But by Mitchell’s own admission, “that’s not basketball.”