Cheap Seats

On Saturday night, I went to the Rangers home opener against the Ottawa Senators. A friend has season tickets, which, in previous years, were located 8 rows behind the net, on the 7th Avenue side of the Garden. This year, however, he downgraded his two seats to the 400s, all the way up on the ninth floor of the Garden, where smoking is not necessarily discouraged, the roof leaks, and the nearest bathroom is one flight down, two sections over. 

This is the only place to watch a hockey game. 

The fans, most of whom sported a Rangers jersey and/or a mullet, were completely into every aspect of the game, from before the team introductions to well beyond the final buzzer. You haven’t experienced a hockey game until a zaftig woman in a Jeff Beukeboom road jersey a few rows over starts yelling about the waning efficiency of a team’s line change from period to period. She was right, too, and if the NHL had enough sense to broadcast every hockey game from the cheap seats, sports fans would flock to hockey faster than an Alex Ovechkin slap shot.

61

Let's put Kobe's 61-point game into perspective. Normally, in a situation like this, fans might point out that the opposing team (re: my Knickerbockers) should have defended Kobe a little more aggressively. While I will agree that Mike D'Antoni could have thrown a few more double-teams Kobe's way, there was simply no way of stopping him last night: Kobe was on a mission from God. 

Speaketh Kobe:

Coming up the elevator, I was thinking about all the great players who had played here. I was thinking about Willis Reed and Jerry West and all of the great rivalries they had. It makes it very special.

Al Harrington, who took a few turns trying to guard Kobe last night, had this to say about Kobe's mindset before the opening tip:

Usually I go up to him and he has something funny to say, but he was all business tonight. I knew we were going to be in for a long one.

You can say that again. Kobe shot an incredible 19-for-31 (61 percent) from the field and a perfect 20-for-20 from the free-throw line. Only three other players in the last two decades have hit 20 or more consecutive free throws in one game-- Rip Hamilton (20/20), Amar'e Stoudemire (20/20) and Dominique Wilkins (23/23). Amazing. Kobe's cold-blooded efficiency was not to be denied.  At one point in the first half, D'Antoni told his shell-shocked team that Kobe should come back down to earth at some point in the night, but "if he keeps hitting these shots, we'll just have to go home." Really, what else can you do? 

After the game, D'Antoni elaborated on his defensive strategy: 

We didn’t really want to double all the time, because he will find other guys. We tried to do the rope-a-dope a little bit, where he might have shot himself out, but he didn’t.

Again, I'm not blaming D'Antoni or poor Wilson Chandler, who had the misfortune of guarding Kobe most of the night. Kobe hit everything, even tightly contested shots, as evidenced in the picture above. It's not like Kobe doesn't have a 60-point game in him. Last night was Kobe's 17th time scoring at least 50 points, and his fifth with at least 60. Jesus. Mary. And Joseph. 

Kobe's 61-point ridiculousness was the most points ever scored in a game at the Garden, besting Jamal Crawford's 52, Michael Jordan's 55, Richie Guerin's 57 and, ultimately, Bernard King's 60, the previous Garden record. (King also once scored 52 points and, later, 55 points at the Garden).

Great players, by definition, do great things. Kobe just happened to save his greatest game of the year for his only visit to the Garden-- and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could have done to stop him. 

UPDATE: NBAMate has a recap of all of Kobe's 24 regular season outbursts of 50 points or more. Check it out.