Embiid and Towns Join the 60 Point Club
Last night, Joel Embiid set a single game franchise record by scoring 70 points as his Philadelphia 76ers defeated the hapless San Antonio Spurs, 133-123. Embiid shot 24-41 from the field while also snaring 18 rebounds and dishing for five assists. Wilt Chamberlain's 76ers record of 68 points had stood since December 16, 1967. Chamberlain still holds the NBA's single game record with his famous 100 point performance, but he accomplished that remarkable feat as a member of the Philadelphia Warriors (now known as the Golden State Warriors). Embiid is the ninth player to score at least 70 points in an NBA game, joining Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, David Thompson, David Robinson, Kobe Bryant, Devin Booker, Donovan Mitchell, and Damian Lillard. Chamberlain, Baylor, and Embiid are the only players who had least 15 rebounds while scoring at least 70 points, but Embiid's specific stat line of 70-18-5 has never been matched; the only other player with a 65-15-5 stat line is Michael Jordan.
While Embiid dominated the unsharpened Spurs, Karl-Anthony Towns scored a career-high and franchise record 62 points as his Minnesota Timberwolves squandered an 18 point lead and lost 128-125 to a Charlotte Hornets team that is almost as bad as the Spurs. Towns had 44 points on 14-17 field goal shooting in the first half, but he managed just four points in the fourth quarter as the Timberwolves collapsed. Minnesota coach Chris Finch was not pleased with his team: "It was an absolute disgusting performance of defense and immature basketball all through the game." It suffices to say that there are good reasons to be skeptical about Minnesota's contender status despite the team's gaudy 30-13 record, but that is a subject for another article.
Embiid and Towns are the first players to score at least 60 points on the same day since George Gervin and David Thompson had their famous last day of the season duel for the 1978 scoring title. Scoring 60 or 70 points in an NBA or ABA game used to be a rare occurrence, particularly for people not named Wilt Chamberlain.
Chamberlain scored at least 60 points in a game 32 times. Kobe Bryant is next on the list with six 60 point games, including 60 on the dot in the final game of his splendid career. Until well into the 21st century, Chamberlain had more 60 point games than every other player in ABA/NBA history!
The NBA shamefully does not include ABA statistics in its official records, so it should be noted that Larry Miller holds the ABA single game scoring record with 67 points, and the only other ABA players who logged a 60 point game during the league's nine year run are Zelmo Beaty (63), Julius Erving (63 in a four overtime game), and Stew Johnson (62). Four 60 point games in nine years in a league that did not have Chamberlain skewing the numbers sounds about right. A 60 point game should be uncommon, a feat accomplished either by a Hall of Famer during the course of a great career (Beaty, Erving), or by a very good player having a career-defining performance (Johnson, Miller).
The 1977-78 Official NBA Guide (published the season after the ABA-NBA merger) has an All-Time Select Circle listing the best regular season single game scoring performances in NBA history. At that time, the only non-Chamberlain names on the 60 point scoring list were Elgin Baylor, Pete Maravich, Rick Barry, Joe Fulks, Jerry West, and George Mikan. Baylor (three times) was the only player other than Chamberlain who had more than one 60 point game. Until 1978, pro basketball's 60 point games consisted of 32 by Chamberlain, and 12 by just 10 other players.
Gervin and Thompson joined the list together on April 4, 1978, as Thompson scored 73 points for the Denver Nuggets versus the Detroit Pistons and then Gervin countered by pouring in 63 points for the San Antonio Spurs versus the New Orleans Jazz to clinch the scoring title by a whisker. Thompson's Nuggets and Gervin's Spurs both lost their respective games, but the individual scoring exploits of those Hall of Famers will be remembered long after the results of those two games are forgotten.
After Gervin, no NBA player scored at least 60 points in a game until Bernard King dazzled fans with 60 points on Christmas Day in 1985. Between 1978 and 1994, six players logged nine 60 point games. Michael Jordan led the way with four 60 point games, while Bernard King, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, Tom Chambers, and David Robinson had one each. Robinson, who scored 71 points in the last game of the 1993-94 season to clinch the scoring title over Shaquille O'Neal, is the only player who scored at least 70 points in a game between David Thompson in 1978 and Kobe Bryant in 2006. Bryant's 81 point game on January 22, 2006 remains second behind only Chamberlain's 100 point game.
From 1995-2000, no NBA player scored 60 or more points in a game. Overall, from 1995 to 2013, five players (Shaquille O'Neal, Tracy McGrady, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, and Gilbert Arenas) had nine 60 point games. Bryant (five) is the only player from that group who had more than one 60 point game during that period (Bryant is the only player who had a 60 point game prior to 2014 who also had one after 2014).
The 60 point club is much larger now, and most of that expansion has happened in less than 10 years (from 2014 to the first three weeks of 2024), with 16 new members joining the club: Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Klay Thompson, Devin Booker, James Harden, Kemba Walker, Damian Lillard, Stephen Curry, Bradley Beal, Jayson Tatum, Karl-Anthony Towns, Kyrie Irving, Luka Doncic, Donovan Mitchell, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Joel Embiid. Overall, from 2014-2024, 17 players had 25 60 point games, with Lillard (five), Harden (four), and Towns (two) each having more than one 60 point game.
The recent proliferation of 60 point games raises a question: Are we blessed to be living in an era filled with more elite scorers than pro basketball has ever seen, or do other factors explain why so many players are having 60 point games? I would argue that rules changes and style of play changes have increased scoring across the board, which leads to more 60 point games: the game is placed at a faster pace now, with less physicality, and with a vastly increased usage of the three point shot. The (over)emphasis on three point shooting has not only resulted in more scoring by three point bombers--including Curry, Harden, and Lillard--but the near-abandonment of the paint defensively has made it easier for players to drive to the hoop and score in the paint. Old school players like Julius Erving and Michael Jordan who rarely shot three pointers would put up huge scoring numbers in today's game because (1) perimeter defenders would not be allowed to touch them and (2) most teams do not focus on rim protection, which means that after Erving or Jordan beat the first defender they would have an uncontested runway for their aerial acrobatics.
Without taking anything away from the talent level of today's top players, I would argue that the league's overall talent level is watered down by expansion and by the influx of players who played little to no college basketball. This means that the best players are able to feast on weak teams: Embiid dropped 70 on a terrible San Antonio team that emerged from tanking with a young roster that has no idea how to play winning NBA basketball. This also means that the best players are able to exploit matchup advantages even against good teams because many of the good teams lack depth: a star player who logs heavy minutes in today's NBA is going to spend some of those minutes sharing the court with vastly inferior bench players, but if you look back to the 1980s the best teams often had Hall of Famers coming off of the bench (Kevin McHale early in his career, Bobby Jones, Bob McAdoo, Bill Walton, etc.).
Scoring 60 or 70 points is a big accomplishment in any league, but there is good reason to believe that it is easier than ever to score 60 or 70 points in the NBA.
Labels: Elgin Baylor, Joel Embiid, Julius Erving, Karl Anthony-Towns, Kobe Bryant, Larry Miller, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain
posted by David Friedman @ 10:10 PM
5 Comments:
I don't like Towns' 62. Sounds like his coach didn't like it either. Wolves were up 18 in the fourth quarter and Towns' hotdogged his way past 60 and hotdogged his team to an L in the process.
In the end, the NBA is primarily an entertainment business, with the sport of basketball itself coming second.
And we have seen what the entertainment business has degenerated into in recent decades -- lack of creativity and originality, watered down content, endless gimmicks and sequels to movies ruining legacies, heavy handed political influences, etc. etc.
How much of these trends do we see in the NBA? Plenty. And, of course, it is having similar results.
Upper management will do anything that they think will result in short-term profits, the integrity of the game and the "quality of the product" do not matter. It's a business. And here we are.
P.S. Embiid scoring 70 isn't that absurd on its own. David Robinson did it in 1994, and Embiid is a high scoring physically dominant center in an era where you don't have a lot of those. Still, there is a difference -- David Robinson did it while actively trying to score as much as possible chasing the scoring title. Embiid did it in a random mid-season game against a destroyed by active tanking Spurs team.
But where we have a real issue are the 70-point games by Devin Booker, Donovan Mitchell and Damian Lillard.
All of those happened in random regular season games and by guards, two of them very undersized ones too, who should have no business being able to score 70 against a serious defense, and who have been repeatedly very easily shut down when faced with such defenses in the playoffs. Kobe scored 81 as a guard, but Kobe could score as much as he wanted/had to against anyone, and had a long track record of doing so.
This is just a mockery in comparison...
Anonymous:
I agree that Embiid has the necessary size and skill to score 70 even against a legitimate defense, though it should be noted that when he has faced legitimate defenses in the playoffs his numbers are much worse than the numbers he posts in the regular season.
I also agree that Booker, Lillard, and Mitchell would not likely have authored 70 point games in earlier eras against legit defenses.
As I mentioned in my article, the sheer number of players who have had at least one 60 point game since 2014 is unusual. Even LeBron--who has the necessary size and skill to score 60--did not do so during his physical prime, but only after the league became softer.
It is sad that the younger generation of basketball fans may believe--based on just looking at numbers without context--that Harden belongs in the same category as Kobe in terms of scoring.
The last time the 70 point game record was reached by a center was by David Robinson during the 1993 - 1994 season. The All-NBA centers for that particular year were Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, and a young Shaquille O'Neal in that order. Interesting thought exercise: where would Embiid, the most recent league MVP, fall among that pack if he was playing back then?
Joel has the skill and talent to be an effective player in any area, but I would obviously not take Embiid over Hakeem or Shaq. I am not sure I would take Embiid over David Robinson. Or even Patrick Ewing to be honest. Embiid would fit comfortably for me above guys like Brad Daugherty and Alonzo Mourning but that would still leave the supposedly best player in the league right now somewhere between the 3rd - 5th best center of 1994.
Keith:
Those are interesting comparisons, and they underscore the point that I made above: the NBA is watered down today. I would not take 2024 Embiid over 1994 Olajuwon or Robinson. The 1994 Shaq was not yet prime Shaq but I probably would not take 2024 Embiid over 1994 Shaq--and I definitely would not take 2024 Embiid over prime Shaq.
Embiid is putting up regular season numbers in this era that he would not likely have put up in other eras with different rules and more top notch centers. The injury-prone Embiid is also running out of time to prove that he can lead a team past the second round of the playoffs; if Embiid ends his career with no Conference Finals appearances despite the excellent supporting casts (and championship level coaches) that he has had then that has an impact on how he should be ranked.
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