Twenty years have passed since Kobe Bryant’s defining performance of his career, when he scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors in 2006.
“No I don’t know where I’m going
But, I sure know where I’ve been
Hanging on the promises
In songs of yesterday
And I’ve made up my mind
I ain’t wasting no more time
Though I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I’m looking for
Oh Lord, I pray, you give me strength to carry on
‘Cause I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams
And here I go again on my own
Going down the only road I’ve ever known
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
And I’ve made up my mind
I ain’t wasting no more time” – Whitesnake, Here I Go Again, 1982
Possibly no other title could more accurately portray state of mind Kobe Bryant must have been in during the 2005-06 season, on his quest to prove the fans of the Los Angeles Lakers, his current teammates, his former teammates (most notably Shaquille O’Neal) and pretty much the entire sports world wrong about their perception of his status and standing within the game in his pursuit of basketball excellence. And on this fateful night, on January 22nd, 2006, it seemed to manifest itself in a way that only Kobe Bryant could ever possibly display – his way, with a performance that nobody will ever forget. Statistically, the second greatest scoring performance in NBA history, only behind Wilt Chamberlain‘s 100-point mark in 1962. Conceivably, the most incredible offensive exhibition in the history of the game.
WHAT PRECEEDED IT
A scrawny teenager from the Philadelphia suburbs coming way of Italy had become one of the many amazing sensations of the loaded 1996 NBA draft, and after a dramatic trade, Lakers general manager Jerry West managed to get his hands on the 17-year-old Kobe Bryant, who quickly established himself as the most exciting young player in the league; the potential heir apparent to Michael Jordan and the ideal running mate for the dominant Shaquille O’Neal. After some initial growing pains, it took Jordan’s coach, Phil Jackson, to come to Los Angeles and put everything in order, as the Lakers went on to win three straight titles between 2000 and 2002, and play in another NBA finals in 2004.
However, things had deteriorated between O’Neal and Kobe Bryant so many times on so many levels that it was impossible for the dynasty to keep going, and it culminated in a debacle against the underdog Detroit Pistons, who dominated the Lakers in the finals to win the title. Bryant himself had a terrible finals, shooting 38% from the field and allegedly refusing to pass the ball to certain people.
It would take another three articles to convey all of the chaos that followed the Lakers throughout that season (with Bryant being in the middle of it, especially because of his sexual assault case that happened in the offseason), and the crescendo of trauma ended with O’Neal leaving in controversy, being traded to the Miami Heat to go join forces with Dwyane Wade in a package that left the Lakers needing to start from scratch after receiving Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and not much more. Jackson also resigned from his position to take a year off, and proceeded to write a book detailing the season, in which he called Bryant amongst other things “uncoachable, immature, selfish, and a difficult presence”.
For his part, Bryant was crowned king of the franchise and received a then record, seven-year, $136 million contract, and was left to finally step out of O’Neal’s large shadow. The new world order was not a happy one as the Lakers went 34-48 that season, missing the playoffs for the first time in 11 years being led by the overmatched Rudy Tomjanovich, resulting in the Lakers begging Jackson to come back to the sidelines – which he eventually did.
Bryant spent the offseason training like never before, and it showed through him having three 40-point games by the end of November – including a historic 62-point game against the Dallas Mavericks (who went on to make the NBA finals that year), where he had more in three quarters than the whole Mavericks team. It was also obvious Bryant would have the total freedom for this level shot-taking, as besides Lamar Odom, there wasn’t much extra talent to go around on the Lakers roster, with the rest of the starting lineup being comprised of the likes of Smush Parker, Luke Walton and Kwame Brown – all NBA role players at best on any decent team.
Conversely, on the other side of the stick were the Toronto Raptors, who were also in a transitional period after the end of the Vince Carter era just over a year prior to this date. Carter had led the Raptors to multiple playoff appearances and a secure spot as the league’s only Canadian team (faring much better than Vancouver, or San Diego previously) but never further than the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, and the relationship was extremely acrimonious at the end, leading to Carter being essentially sent for nothing out of Toronto in December 2004 in one of the most lopsided trades ever for a superstar in his prime (until the whole Luka Doncic fiasco).
The Raptors had the fortune of getting Chris Bosh in the loaded 2003 NBA draft as their first sensible draft choice in years, and there was some added talent in the team with the likes of Jalen Rose and T.J. Ford, along with Charlie Villanueva and Antonio Davis inside, but there was little else to hold as optimism heading into the 2005-06 season with multiple losing seasons being behind the Canadian club. The Raptors started the season inefficiently and had a 14-27 record entering the game, while the Lakers played much more precise under Jackson’s leadership to have a respectable 22-19 record before that January night.
Claim Now THE GAME ITSELF
So much has been said about the game, but it bears repeating again and again – Kobe’s 81 points were not just the mark of a selfish gunner who was looking to break every scoring record known to man, but rather a necessity, considering the Lakers were down 63-49 at the half. Bryant also had a pair of 50-point games against the Kings and Clippers just before this contest, so he was in red hot form coming into the game. The trio of Mike James, Charlie Villanueva and Morris Peterson did the heavy lifting for the Raptors on offense while head coach Sam Mitchell was determined to not let any of Bryant’s teammates get in a rhythm – possibly believing one man cannot win a game on his own. A respectable sentiment looking at the box score and the scoreboard, considering the Raptors were ahead and Bryant had a good, but not astonishing 26 points at the half.
And then…
It’s hard to put into words the third quarter other than it looking like an NBA video game where all the shooting sliders were set to 100 and the difficulty was lowered to the smallest level. Kobe hit 11 out of 15 shots, including four out of five threes, to get into a zone outrageous even for his lofty standards. It wasn’t just the amount of points but the difficulty and the variety of the shots. Bryant’s baskets were, in order: a reverse layup, a corner pull-up, a contested shot from the top of the key, a contested transition three, followed by two more, a contested corner fadeaway two (while being fouled), a three from the wing, another reverse layup, a steal into a transition dunk (which gave the Lakers the lead)…you get the idea. The Raptors lead melted like ice cream and no timeout or defensive adjustment could do anything about it.
The scoring bonanza continued in the fourth quarter as at one point it seemed as if the entire Raptors bench was running out along with the five guys on the court to guard Bryant, yet nothing helped. Kobe’s career-high fell. Then MJ’s career-high mark. Then 70 points. Then Elgin Baylor’s Lakers record for a single-game. All of it culminating at the end with a stat line that seems impossible to fathom, even today: 81 points, 28-46 from the field, 7-13 from the three point line, 18-20 from the free-throw line. Along with six rebounds and a very amusing two assists.
The Lakers were down 14 and ended up winning by 18 needing every single one of those points. Looking at who Bryant’s teammates were, it makes it all the more impressive he was able to do this being far and away the only consistently dangerous scorer on the team. It is also worth mentioning the era of play: the 2005-06 season was the fifth slowest season of all time in terms of pace with 90.5 possessions per game (compared to today’s 99.7). An immensely more difficult league to score in terms of the rules structure, a lower scoring league all around with a severely smaller amount of three-point shots taken. One begins to ponder how this performance would have looked in today’s NBA and how Kobe would have attacked teams with his developed three-point shooting.
And yes, on a technical level, Wilt Chamberlain did score the most points in a game, which is something that might not ever be topped. But it is also inarguable that Chamberlain was physically so much more dominant than all the players he faced then, giving him a decisive advantage (with rumors going around to this day that his teammates were deliberately fouling players of the Knicks to get the ball back for him so he could score more). Luka Doncic had his 73-point performance against the Hawks in 2024, shooting a tremendous 25-33 from the field. But this was a game where the Hawks gave up 150 points while Doncic had a caliber of team around him that not only made the Western Conference finals two years before, they were on their way to making the NBA finals that year.
Most of the other games needed overtime (like Jordan’s 69 or Nikola Jokic‘s 60-point triple-double) or were blowouts. Donovan Mitchell and Damian Lillard couldn’t get past 73 either. Neither did David Robinson or O’Neal whose career-high seems a modest 61 in comparison. Even Bryant’s earlier 62-point game against the Mavericks was never a competitive game (the Lakers had a 34-point lead entering the fourth quarter and Bryant also shot 25 free throws). This was different.
Much has been made about the way the Raptors played defense that night, and it is interesting to hear conflicting reports on what actually took place. This coming from coach Sam Mitchell:
“We doubled him, we trapped him when he got past half-court; we played zone; couple of times, we triple teamed him; we even played a box-and-one, which you don’t use outside of college. We played every defense that me and my assistant coaches could create. I did everything but mug that man, and he still scored 81. He spun, he flew, he made shots that were incredible.
Now, at the end of the night, I was faced with people saying ‘run the whole team at him’! No, we were winning the game. So I pose the question: if we had won the game and Kobe scored 81 points, what would have been the headline? That he is selfish and can’t include his teammates. So it was a catch-22.”
However, some of the players on the floor, including Jalen Rose, have a different memory of how things went down from the coaching staff:
“We were playing a 1-2-2 zone. Against Kobe Bryant. In the NBA. And we were winning the game, so it gave us some false sense of security. I mean, who is Kobe gonna pass it to? Smush Parker? Kwame Brown? Now Kobe had good numbers in the first half but he wasn’t dominating. And then he erupted for like 40 in the third quarter. I mean, he was dominant over us. You know when you are growing up and the rim in the backyard is 8 feet tall and then there is one guy who can probably dunk on a 10-foot hoop? That’s how it was.
And he didn’t say a word. And we thought about doing some things to him during he game. Mike James, myself and the guys came to the sideline and huddled up to talk to Sam Mitchell to say: ‘hey Coach, maybe double team him? Maybe make someone else beat us? That may help.’ And yet he was playing 1-on-1, going between the legs, behind the back… I just remember realizing at one point during the game that there might be something historic happening. But I was so frustrated that I said: ‘Coach, we have to make him at least work on defense, and he is guarding me right now; so I’m gonna take him to the post.’ Sam Mitchell got so mad at me for doing that, that not only did he not want me to do it again, but he took me out!
And coaches go through this sometimes. They think: since you didn’t listen to me 100 percent, I am gonna watch you suffer. And coaches do that sometimes to their basketball team when they want to send a message to the team. But Kobe sent a stronger one to all of us. And yet, that is a tribute to the respect we had for Kobe, because if he would have been taunting in any way, shape or form, it would have all gone different. I mean, when you are going up against a guy like that, there are gonna be historic nights.“
“I remember half-time, and that he had 55 in the second half. That’s the stat that isn’t remembered. People think it was a 40-40 split. But it wasn’t. I remember we were up big, even though we weren’t a good defensive team. But we were up by 14 or 16 points, on the road, so we were feeling great. He had 26 points, so I felt like he can have 50 as long as we win.
And I just remember he came out in the second half and he couldn’t miss. You just started watching him play because he started doing stuff nobody else was doing. Nobody was taking threes that far beyond the line. Steph Curry was the first one who started doing that again. Nobody saw that back then and he was pulling up from that far. He just started shooting and making everything. And we were bad defensively already, so it wasn’t like there was much resistance. So it was a perfect storm that he hit every shot, every three, and he had a lot of free throws.
You get stuck in a dream almost and wonder ‘can we stop this?’ I don’t know. He just hit a fadeaway from over there (in the far corner). I have never seen that before. It was unbelievable. I didn’t have to look at the scoreboard. I knew what we had. I said ‘let’s get off the court and go as soon as possible’.“
And finally, a view from Kobe Bryant himself, many years later:
“What sticks out for me is that I had pepperoni pizza the night before the game! Funnily enough, the day I actually scored 81 was my grandpa’s birthday, who had passed away a few months before. And my grandmother, who had never seen me play, because her nerves can’t take it, flew out to California, to watch me play for the first time, and the only time. And it just so happened to be the night I scored 81.
“At half-time, I just said in the third quarter that I’m gonna go after them. And I’m not gonna stop. And that’s what I did. I felt like I was having a special night when Lamar was telling me that every timeout. He said ‘well you can’t get 50!’ And then the next time he said ‘You can’t get 60!’ And finally Kobe Bryant said ‘Well go on and get 80!’
That wasn’t something out of the realm of possibility in my mind because of the amount of work I put in. I put a lot of time on the gym and the track. I could run all day and run at a high speed all day long. And I had taken so many shots. My shot felt sharp. So if my foot stays on the gas, there could be games where I could have 80 points. And that’s what happened. The most important thing is that you never want to limit your imagination because people might think you are crazy. But if we as athletes don’t believe it is possible for us to do these things, how will we inspire people?“
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER
The Raptors finished the season with a 27-55 record, which led them to get the #1 overall pick in the 2006 NBA draft that ended up being Andrea Bargnani. The team rebounded to make the playoffs in consecutive seasons, proceeded to lose Chris Bosh (who would go on to win two championships with the Miami Heat), slowly rebuild during the Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan era and finally got their happy ending in 2019 by winning the NBA title on the back of the one-year Kawhi Leonard rental.
As for Bryant, he finished the season averaging a career best 35.4 points per game to lead the league in scoring and the Lakers to the sixth seed in the Western Conference with a 47-35 record, somehow not winning MVP and losing out to Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash, who defended his MVP crown from the year before (in one of the most controversial ballots ever). Bryant would then hit a historic shot to win Game 4 in the Lakers’ first round playoff matchup against Nash and the Suns, but the Lakers would blow a 3-1 lead, including a controversial Game 7 blowout where Bryant was accused of purposefully not passing the ball to prove a point (although this is a point that Bryant and others have disputed since).
After nearly departing for Chicago, Kobe Bryant stayed for good after the Lakers acquired All-Star Pau Gasol to pair him with the scoring dynamo, resulting in three straight NBA finals appearances and two more championships, making the total five for Bryant’s career. He would finish third on the all-time scoring list, retire in 2016 and end his career on a legendary 60-point game against the Utah Jazz. But his explosion in 2006 might always be more precious to him.
January is the month of anniversaries for the man who wore #8 and #24. In several days, it will be six years since his life was tragically ended in a helicopter crash.
It seems obvious which one of them will be the one everyone wants to remember – and one that won’t ever be forgotten as long as paper balls are tossed into a trash can and basketball is being played somewhere.
