Is it a big deal?


Earlier this week, Jack Taylor, a guard from division III Grinnell College scored 138 points in a single basketball game. At first glance, this seems to be an extremely significant accomplishment for this player and the sport of basketball. Is it really that impressive? In this performance, Taylor took over 100 shots and shot under 50% on these shots. It is said that the average time between his shots were 20 seconds. Although he scored a great amount and led his team to a win, why was he the only one shooting the ball? This is not as impressive of a milestone as many people would think simply due to the lack of team play shown and the performance that night was very selfish on Taylor's part. Basketball has always been a team sport and it is very unlikely for one player to score such a high percentage of his team's points, and Taylor went completely against this idea during that game. One statistic that has been left out of this story is that Taylor recorded 0 assists in that game.
Scoring 138 points in a single game is a difficult task for almost anybody but when you look at how it was done it isn't as great of a story as people want it to be. The game plan for Grinnell that day was to keep giving Jack Taylor the ball and it obviously worked out for them but that isn't how basketball was meant to be played, and that strategy will seldom work efficiently for a team. This performance should definitely be recognized for its unlikeliness but Taylor is not some superstar in the making from this school.