Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game against the Raptors is widely regarded as his greatest game. But NBA Reddit says otherwise.
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Kobe Bryant during his peak was an absolute force of nature. The 5-time champion with the Los Angeles Lakers was one of the best scorers to ever grace the court. For 2 consecutive years from 2005-07 at his peak, Kobe averaged 33.5 PPG, which exemplifies his greatness.
Fans, however, love to remember special moments of their beloved superstars, rather than cold stats. Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game against the Toronto Raptors is the second-highest scoring output in NBA history, bettered only by the insane 100-pointer game by Wilt Chamberlain. That game is regarded by many to be his best-ever output.
Some Redditors apparently disagree with this notion.
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Fans have argued that another performance of the legend is better than the storied Raptor game. Recently, a video of Kobe Bryant’s 62-point game against the Dallas Mavericks resurfaced on Reddit. It wasn’t long before Redditors started to debate the superiority of this performance. How could scoring 81-points be worse than registering 62?
Well, the major argument seems to be that Kobe only played 3 quarters during the Mavs game. He didn’t even need to come back to the court because the Lakers were absolutely blowing the Mavs over. Another fact to remember, Mavs would go on to be the Western Conference champs that season, winning 60 games.
During the game, Kobe Bryant interestingly outscored the entire Mavericks roster 62-61 after 3 quarters.
Let that sink in. Kobe actually outscored a team that included Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry operating at their absolute primes. The roster also included legit scoring threats at the time like Josh Howard and Jerry Stackhouse. This just goes on to show the sheer brilliance of the legend.
Another fun fact, the two legendary games were only separated by a month. So he was basically putting on such shows for fun on a regular basis. Kobe played 41 minutes and averaged a whopping 35.4 points per game that season. Absolutely insane.
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Whatever be the result of the heated debate between fans, one thing is certain. We were really lucky to witness the genius of a basketball legend at work.
