Kobe Bryant’s best game against the Dallas Mavericks – 62 points in 3 quarters in 2005
Kobe Bryant’s 62 points in three quarters is one of the greatest scoring feats that the NBA has ever seen in its history. It felt like he could have gotten close to Wilt Chamberlain‘s record of one hundred points that night if he stayed in the game, and when he left he had scored more than the entire Dallas Mavericks team after three quarters.
This performance perhaps is one of the deciding factors in why the Dallas Mavericks were the first team in the NBA other than the Lakers to retire Kobe’s number 24 since his passing. Mark Cuban surely saw his fair share of games when Kobe was just impossible for his team to stop, and even gave him a standing ovation in the middle of a game for hitting a 3-pointer with his opposite shooting hand.
The crazy part about his game was that he put up that many points while shooting 58 percent from the field on 18-of-31 shots. It seemed like everything he was putting up was falling for him during this one, and it was a giant foreshadowing of what was to come later in the season.
Teammate Brian Shaw thought he was crazy for coming out of the game when he had a chance at such an astounding scoring feat. But Kobe was quoted after the game saying,
“I’ll do it when we really need it.”
Later that season he lived up to his word and scored a career-high 81 points.