Is a 100-point performance possible for an NBA player in today's high-scoring game?
Sixty-two years have passed since Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in an NBA game.
His record-setting performance remains a celebrated and mythical achievement – because no NBA player has threatened to eclipse it and because there’s a dearth of visual evidence.
Just one other NBA player has reached 80. Kobe Bryant scored 81 points against Toronto in 2006.
However, in the past two seasons, four players (Luka Doncic, Joel Embiid, Donovan Mitchell, Damian Lillard) have scored at least 70, and that’s two more times that players have reached at least 70 than the previous 40 seasons combined.
Scoring is up. Offensive talent is better and deeper than it’s ever been.
Is the NBA on the verge of another 80-point game? Can someone get 90? Is 100 possible?
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“You've got so many great talents in this league,” Los Angeles Lakers star and NBA all-time leading scorer LeBron James said when asked by USA TODAY Sports. “Would I sit here and say I think guys can score 80 or 90? Yeah, why not? It's been done before. Talent is talent no matter what generation it is – '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s all the way until now, and great basketball and great scorers are going to be great scorers no matter what era they're in.
“Once a great scorer gets going, there's really nothing you can do.”
A dozen years ago, Bryant told USA TODAY Sports that another 100-point game in the NBA is “inevitable. It'll eventually happen.”
Then-NBA Commissioner David Stern said shortly before handing the job off to Adam Silver, “There is almost no record in the NBA that is safe. And I think that there will be another one.”
'Talent's at an all-time high'
On Jan. 26, Dallas star Doncic scored a career-high 73 points in a 148-143 victory against Atlanta. The total was the most in an NBA game since Bryant’s 81, and Doncic did it in an amazingly efficient manner: 25 made shots on 33 attempts, including 8-for-13 on 3-pointers and 15-for-16 from the foul line.
That night, two days after Embiid scored 70, Doncic took 38.8% of his team’s shots and had a substantial 41.3 usage rate (the percentage of plays used by a player when he is on the floor) compared to his regular-season average of 36.7. With a few more shots and makes, Doncic could’ve hit 80.
When Bryant scored 81, he attempted 46 shots and made 28, including seven 3s, and hit 18 free throws. He scored 14 points in the first quarter, 12 in the second, 27 in the third and 28 in the fourth. His 55 second-half points are the second-most in a half and he is just one of five players to reach 50 or more points in a half.
Twenty-plus points, on average, a quarter for four quarters is a remarkable and mostly unsustainable scoring pace. Phoenix All-Star Devin Booker scored 70 against Boston March 24, 2017, and had 51 points in the second half.
“It was harder to get 70 back in my day. Now everybody gets it,” the wisecracking Booker said at All-Star Weekend. “People are scoring the ball at a high level. The talent’s at an all-time high. It’s the evolution of the game. People just keep getting better and better. Eighty, 90, 100’s possible.”
What would a 100-point game look like now?
What does getting to 100 look like in today’s game?
To score 80, a player would need to take about 40 shots and make 28-30 with 7-10 being 3s and then about 15 made free throws. Getting to 100 looks even more difficult. If a player hit 80-90, the defense would do everything it could to make sure 100 wouldn't happen. But 35 made shots, with at least 10 made 3s and 20 made free throws gets a player to 100.
Kevin Durant, Booker’s teammate on the Suns and one of the game’s all-time great scorers, is not surprised either.
“When I see those high-scoring games, I just think about the skill that has come into the league and how great these players really are and how great offense is always going to beat great defense all the time,” he said. “You watch Luka's 70-point game, and he's making tough shot after tough shot. I definitely feel like someone can break that 80-point.”
But 100, that’s a different story.
“One hundred points would be tough to do in a game. You've got to make every shot and get a lot of shots up to get to 100,” Durant said.
Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers and TNT Inside the NBA analyst Charles Barkley were skeptical, too.
“I don’t know if anybody’s going to score 100,” Barkley said. “You’ve seen more 50s and 60s in the last few years because these guys are living behind the 3-point line and at the free throw line."
Said Rivers: “For a guy to get it (90-100 points), he’s going to have to have a team that says, ‘Let’s go get it for you.’ I don’t think that’s going to come naturally.”
Multiple players and ex-players pointed to the rules changes over the years, from defensive three seconds to hand-checking to freedom of movement, and the proliferation of the 3-pointers that have led to offensive outbursts.
In the past nine seasons, a player has scored 50 or more points 156 times, which is six more times than it occurred from 1990-91 through 2013-14.
“It has to be organic. You just can’t give a guy a ball every single time and say, ‘Let me see if you can get 100,’ ” Barkley said.
James has just one 60-point game in his career, but often marvels on social media when a player has a historical scoring game.
“Once a guy's in a zone, there's nothing you can do,” James said. “If a guy decides he wants to stay in the zone, or you've seen Caitlin (Clark) the other night when she broke the record, there's nothing you can do. …
“Obviously, I'm not going to put too many guys on Kobe's level, but when you have a hot streak, we've seen Kobe put up 81. I think it could be done.”
Follow NBA reporter Jeff Zillgitt on social media @JeffZillgitt