On the surface, this may not seem like as sweet of a performance by Garrison Mathews as his out-of-nowhere 28-point game a few days ago, but do not be fooled by the raw point totals. I repeat: do NOT be fooled. Practitioners of the pseudoscience known as “mathematics” will have you believe that that performance was 10 points better than this performance. Maybe, in some twisted way, they are right. But they are also very, very wrong.
Everyone knows that the TRUE greatness of a given NBA scoring performance lies in the amount of buckets made. And in this game, Mathews made the same amount of buckets, on the same amount of attempts, as in his 28-burger. 6 of 9 from the field, the only difference was in the first game, he was getting Harden-esque calls and in this game, he wasn’t. He actually made MORE threes in this one, so you can pretty much forget about the old performance and think of this one as the defining game of his career.
6 field goals isn’t really very many, but for a dude like Mathews, it totally is. That’s another factor to consider when determining the greatness of a performance; the general quality of the player in question. Marginal players scoring tons of points is way better than Superstars scoring tons of points.
I’ve done some quick math (the real kind of math, not the pseudoscience kind), and by my calculations, this is a better performance than Kobe Bryant’s 81.