The awe of Donovan Mitchell's 71

Spida with an all-time performance to get Cleveland a win.

Good morning. We’re sending thoughts and blessings to Damar Hamlin. What a horrifying moment. I’m going to use this as a moment to schedule a CPR class to recertify. The Red Cross offers these classes across the nation and maybe beyond. You might want to check if your city’s recreation department offers classes — they often do.

Let’s basketball.

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Donovan Mitchell had just five points in the first quarter. The Cavaliers lost the period by seven. He had 11 in the second quarter, most of that coming in the final minutes before halftime. Cleveland went into the half down 18.

Then Spida opened up holy hell on the Bulls, bringing the Cavaliers all the way back on his back, finishing with 71 in the game.

I love the Cavs’ TV crew just laughing their tails off when we get to overtime. No commentary needed, just awe.

This is the most any NBA player has scored since Kobe’s 81 some 17 years ago. It’s a top-10 scoring performance of all-time. Plus, Mitchell had 11 assists, making him responsible for 99 total points, which is said to be the most since Wilt’s 100 point, 2 assist game. No one in NBA history had ever before had at least 70 points and 10 assists. Only two players had ever had 60 points and at least 10 assists (James Harden in 2018 and Luka Doncic last week).

The leaguewide individual scoring explosion is something else. Earlier this season, I wrote about the huge increase in players averaging at least 30 points per game.

A historic explosion of individual high scorers in the NBA

We were at eight players in mid-November; we’re now down to six as Kevin Durant and (ironically) Mitchell slipped under 30 points per game; KD is currently at 29.6 and Monday’s performance boosted Mitchell to 29.3. Remember: five players averaging 30+ is the NBA record, and that was in 1961-62. The modern record is three players in a single season. There are twice that many right now.

The individual games figures are impressive, too. NBA players have dropped at least 50 in a game 13 times this season, and we’re several games shy of the broadly agreed upon midway point of the year. All of last season, players hit the 50-point mark 19 times. It was 14 in 2020-21, 23 in 2019-20 and 22 in 2018-19. This season is on pace to knock those out.

Don’t ignore the fact that we also had another successful¹ intentionally missed free throw to send a game to overtime! The NBA is getting overpowered on these; need to mix in some box-out drills.

Bally Sports Cleveland @BallySportsCLE

Are you serious, Donovan?! 😳

All these figures and all this historical context only verifies and supports what our eyes are telling us when we watch the action this season: the NBA is incredibly entertaining right now on an individual and team level. There’s something amazing happening almost every night. It makes it a blast to watch and really hard to fully contextualize, like a 20-minute fireworks show that’s all grand finale with no pauses or slow build-up. Just booms all the time.