Triple Single!

[EBass]

From the Strib..

Lebanese BALLER Mohammad El Akkari scored 113 points in a Division A League Final 8 game Tuesday. We have no idea what the league designation means, but we do know that he came in averaging 7.6 ppg, so that was a pretty good game for him. We also know there are several other priceless details about his amazing accomplishment per FIBA Asia's web site:

As per records available, this is first instance of a player scoring more than 100 points in an official game played in any of the leagues in FIBA Asia National Federations. The only two other instances of more than 100 points in a single game in Asia are when Lou Salvador scored 116 points for the Philippines against China in the 1923 Far Eastern Games and Jeron Teng scored 104 points for Xavier School against Grace Christian College in a High School game in the Philipines. According to the Guinness Book of World Records the highest ever individual score is the 272 points when Swede Mats Wermelin, as a 13-year-old boy, scored all the points in a game in a regional school tournament in Stockholm.

Akkari reeled in an incredible 32 three-pointers out of 59 attempts in an overall 40/69 field shooting and a solitary free-throw “Thank god for this performance. I think it’s all a result of my practice,” Akkari said from the team bus on his way back to Tripoli. "I also want to thank my coach for letting me play that long and all my teammates for helping."

Akkari apparently did NOT say, "If only I had known about Lou Salvador's nearly 90-year-old continental record, I would have kept hoisting shots faster than Hollywood Robinson in the fourth quarter of a blowout." Akkari's squad, by the way, won 173-141.

And who is this Wermelin character? What would Kevin Love have said to him?

[Scott M]

A small part of me enjoys when a player heats up and scores a bunch of points, gets in the zone or on fire, so to speak. How long can the guy keep it up.

But most of me despises it at its core. Basketball is a beautiful game because of the team concept.

Kobe's 81 point game in 2006? 2 assists.

Wilt's 100 point game in 1962? 2 assists.

The volume of shots launched by these guys compared to their teammates is appalling. Should the best players and shooters and thus best offensive weapons take the most shots? Yes. But when you are double, triple, or quadruple teamed and you can't find an open teammate? That's ugly. Individual scoring in triple figures is a milestone that I often associate with bad basketball.

I'm sure the Lebanon game was the same thing.