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Fluke Scoring Performances

Rating the biggest fluke scoring performances in NBA history.

Justin Kubatko

Nov 15, 2022

Yesterday marked the 13th anniversary of Brandon Jennings’ improbable 55-point game. That got me thinking: How can we rate the biggest fluke scoring performances in NBA history?

One way to tackle this problem is to subtract the player's career scoring average from his point total for a given game:

PTS - PPG

However, this method gives the same score to (a) Player A who scores 30 points and has a career scoring average of 5.0 PPG and (b) Player B who scores 50 points and has a career scoring average of 25.0 PPG:

Player A = 30 - 5.0 = 25.0
Player B = 50 - 25.0 = 25.0

If we're looking for fluke performances, Player A's effort is definitely a better fit (definitionally speaking) than Player B's.

Another approach is to find the percentage difference between the player's point total for a game and his career scoring average:

(PTS - PPG) / PPG

Again, though, this method has some issues when it comes to identifying fluke performances. For example, consider (a) Player A who scores 10 points and has a career scoring average of 2.5 PPG and (b) Player B who scores 50 points and has a career scoring average of 12.5 PPG:

Player A = (10 - 2.5) / 2.5 = 3.0
Player B = (50 - 12.5) / 12.5 = 3.0

These players end up with the same score, even though I think everybody would call Player B's performance the much bigger fluke.

Since neither of the approaches above work well alone, why not combine them? In other words:

(PTS - PPG)^2 / PPG

Note that this will capture fluke performances in either direction, as the numerator will always be positive, but that’s fine. Anyway, let’s go back to the first example:

Player A = (30 - 5.0)^2 / 5.0 = 125
Player B = (50 - 25.0)^2 / 25.0 = 25

Now, Player A's performance is deemed a much bigger fluke.

Here’s the second example:

Player A = (10 - 2.5)^2 / 2.5 = 22.5
Player B = (50 - 12.5)^2 / 10.0 = 112.5

This time, Player B's effort is classified as the more surprising outcome.

Now let’s dig into some results. We’ll start with 50-point games, since Jennings is the one who motivated me to do this work. Here are the five biggest fluke 50-point games in NBA history (at least by this measure):

211.9 – Tony Delk (53 PTS, 9.1 PPG)
206.8 – Corey Brewer (51 PTS, 8.7 PPG)
203.4 — Walt Wesley (50 PTS, 8.5 PPG)
186.2 – Tracy Murray (50 PTS, 9.0 PPG)
178.0 – Willie Burton (53 PTS, 10.3 PPG)

Some observations:

Tony Delk appeared in 545 games and was held scoreless in more than 10% of them (55, to be exact). The second-highest point total of Delk’s career was 27.
Walt Wesley was a 6-foot-11-inch center who played for eight different franchises during his 10 years in the NBA. His 50-point game came during the 1970-71 season with the expansion Cleveland Cavaliers, when Wesley averaged a career-high 17.7 PPG. That season was by far his best, although it should be noted that the Cavaliers were awful, finishing a league-worst 15-67.
Willie Burton’s 53-point game is certainly an outlier, but did you know he averaged a career-high 15.3 PPG that season and scored 20 or more points in 14 of his 53 games?

Jennings, by the way, comes in 15th with a score of 119.3 (55 points, 14.1 PPG).

Let's remove the 50-point requirement and look at all games:

269.4 — Hank Finkel (42 PTS, 5.1 PPG)
248.2 — Alec Peters (36 PTS, 4.1 PPG)
244.6 — Justin James (31 PTS, 3.2 PPG)
240.2 — Acie Earl (40 PTS, 5.1 PPG)
239.5 — Percy Jones III (32 PTS, 3.4 PPG)

Peters and James have only played 20 and 72 career games, respectively, so let’s require a minimum of 100 games:

269.4 — Hank Finkel (42 PTS, 5.1 PPG)
240.2 — Acie Earl (40 PTS, 5.1 PPG)
239.5 — Percy Jones III (32 PTS, 3.4 PPG)
238.3 — Reggie Jordan (28 PTS, 2.7 PPG)
219.4 — Brian Scalabrine (29 PTS, 3.1 PPG)

A couple of notes:

Three of the five highest-scoring games in Finkel’s 551-game career came on three consecutive days: March 6-8, 1968. Playing for the expansion San Diego Rockets, Finkel averaged 21.7 PPG in 11 games that month. It was the highest such figure of his career by almost 8.0 PPG.
The four highest-scoring games of Earl’s career came during a six-day span in April 1996. He averaged 17.4 PPG that month with the expansion Toronto Raptors. He never averaged more than 7.4 PPG in any other month during his brief four-year career.

As you can see from cases like Walt Wesley’s and Hank Finkel’s, sometimes a player just has a fluke season. So instead of using the player's career scoring average, let's use his season scoring average instead.

With that change, here's the new list for 50-point games:

233.6 — Jamal Crawford, 2018-19 (51 PTS, 7.9 PPG)
148.5 — Terrence Ross, 2013-14 (51 PTS, 10.9 PPG)
135.4 — Tony Delk, 2000-01 (53 PTS, 12.3 PPG)
121.4 — Corey Brewer, 2013-14 (51 PTS, 12.3 PPG)
104.7 — Fred Brown, 1973-74 (58 PTS, 16.5 PPG)

And here’s the new list for all games:

294.8 — Anfernee Simons, 2018-19 (37 PTS, 3.8 PPG)
282.1 — Walter McCarty, 2000-01 (27 PTS, 2.2 PPG)
248.2 — Alec Peters, 2017-18 (36 PTS, 4.1 PPG)
246.4 — Austin Croshere, 2006-07 (34 PTS, 3.7 PPG)
234.3 — Zoran Dragic, 2014-15 (22 PTS, 1.8 PPG)

Some items of note:

Jamal Crawford — who came off the bench that night — became the oldest player in NBA history to record a 50-point game (39 years, 20 days). He also became the first player in NBA history to record a 50-point game with four different franchises.
Anfernee Simons’ outburst came in the Trail Blazers’ final game of the 2018-19 season. He was one of three Blazers to play the full 48 minutes that night. Going into the game, his career high in minutes was 13.
Walter McCarty was held scoreless in 35 of his 60 games during the 2000-01 season. He only scored in double figures twice, with his second-highest scoring game that season being an 11-point effort.

All of that said, if I had to choose the biggest fluke scoring performance in NBA history I would have to go with Tony Delk’s 53-point game, with Corey Brewer’s 51-point effort a close second.

Scoring 20 or 30 points in an NBA game is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not newsworthy — just about any player should be able to do that at least once given enough opportunities.

In fact, there have been 2,592 players in NBA history who appeared in at least 100 regular-season games. Among those players:

99.9% scored 10 or more points in at least one game.
89.1% scored 20 or more points in at least one game.
50.9% scored 30 or more points in at least one game.
19.6% scored 40 or more points in at least one game.
6.1% scored 50 or more points in at least one game.

As you can see, almost 90% of these players managed to score 20 or more points in at least one game, and a little more than half scored 30 or more points at least once. However, less than one in 15 had a 50-point effort.

Some of the best scorers in NBA history were not able to join the exclusive 50-point club. Among the 63 players in NBA history with a career scoring average of at least 20.0 PPG (min. 400 games), there are 11 who did not score 50 points in a single regular-season or postseason game:

Mark Aguirre
Paul Arizin
Walt Bellamy
Julius Erving
World B. Free
Paul George (active)
Dan Issel
Marques Johnson
Bob Lanier
Mitch Richmond
Glenn Robinson

In other words, a 50-point game is so rare that even some of the most prolific scorers in NBA history have failed to reach that mark.

I'll leave you with two final pieces of trivia:

There are four players in NBA history who have recorded a 50-point game and own a career scoring average less than 10 PPG — Corey Brewer (8.7), Tony Delk (9.1), Tracy Murray (9.0), and Walt Wesley (8.5).
There are also four players in NBA history who have recorded a 50-point game in a season in which they averaged less than 13 PPG — Jamal Crawford (7.9), Terrence Ross (10.9), Corey Brewer (12.3), and Tony Delk (12.3).

As you can see, Delk and Brewer are the only players to appear on both of these lists.