Kobe Bryant Scores 50 Points in Back-To-Back Games

Kobe Bryant scored 50 points on Sunday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, in the Lakers' 109-102 victory in Los Angeles. Kobe became the first Laker since 1962 to have back-to-back games of 50 or more points.

Combined with the 65 points Kobe scored on Friday night against the Portland Trailblazers - an overtime victory for the Lakers - Kobe has now scored 115 points in the last two games. This matches the third-highest two-game total for any player in the last 40 years.

Kobe's total equals Wilt Chamberlain's 115 in December of 1967, and is topped only by Kobe's own 118 points last season and a two-game stretch for Michael Jordan in 1990. During the last ten years, only two other players have had back-to-back games of 50 points each. Antawn Jamison scored 51 against the Seattle Supersonics and Los Angeles Lakers in December of 2000, and Allen Iverson scored 54 against Milwaukee and 51 against Utah in December of 2004.

While Kobe's two-game stretch is the best such pair of games in recent history, if we look outside the past 40 years, that 115 point total would be well down the list, with Wilt Chamberlain holding all the top positions. During the 1961-1962 season, Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game, and had numerous two-game stretches that totaled over 115 points. In one game that year, he actually scored 100 points in a single game.

For his career, Kobe has now scored 50 or more points 17 times, and has three games of 60 or more. Impressive, but none of those statistics is a record. Again, Wilt leads every list, with 32 games of 60 points or more, and more than 100 50-point games. And even Kobe's two-game stretch isn't quite a record, even for the Lakers. In December of 1962, Elgin Baylor scored 50 or more points in two consecutive games. Then he did it again, for three straight games.

Still, what Kobe did was spectacular. In an era of free agency, where good teams are difficult to keep together from year to year and - because of expansion - there are more tough defenders and more coast-to-coast trips, Kobe's 115 points are worth recognizing.

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