In December 2005, Kobe Bryant was starting to put up 40-point games with greater frequency than ever. But he was just getting warmed up.
Two days after a disappointing loss to the Houston Rockets in which they scored only 74 points, the Los Angeles Lakers hosted the Dallas Mavericks, a team they had beaten just eight days earlier on the road.
The Mavs had an in-his-prime Dirk Nowitzki and an 18-6 record, and it looked likely they would get their revenge on L.A.
But from the start, Bryant prevented anything of the sort.
He hit 7-of-8 shots in the first quarter to get the Lakers off to a 25-18 lead. Although he was just 4-of-10 in the second quarter, he scored 17 points, giving him 32 points in the first half.
Then Bryant became a supernova.
He scored a whopping 30 points in the third quarter, making 7-of-13 from the field and 14-of-16 from the free-throw line. Whatever Dallas tried to do to contain him failed.
He was hotter than a heat wave in the Sahara Desert.
After three periods, Bryant had amassed 62 points on 18-of-31 overall shooting and 22-of-25 from the charity stripe. The Mavs, meanwhile, had 61 points.
With L.A. comfortably ahead by 34, he decided to sit out the final quarter instead of going for 70 points — or more.
Kobe’s 62-point game against the Mavericks where he single-handedly outscored a Dallas team that would go on to play in the NBA Finals through three quarters before sitting out the entire fourth quarter will always be my favorite Kobe game. This Brian Shaw story makes it better. pic.twitter.com/2ERUSuRx4I
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) August 24, 2021
As it turned out, Bryant would erupt for 81 about a month later.
In many ways, his 62-point performance was more impressive, given the pace he was on when he exited at the end of the third quarter. In addition, he had done it against the Mavs, the team that represented the Western Conference in the NBA Finals that season and, in the opinion of some people, should’ve won it all.
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