History of Kobe Bryant's 81-point game in Timeline

1976

On March 10, 2026, Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo surpassed Bryant's 81 points with 83 for most points scored in a game since the NBA–ABA merger in 1976.

1978

At 5:30 in the fourth, Bryant hit another three over the outstretched arms of Rose. A Kwame Brown screen allowed Bryant to get off a wide open three for his 70th point. He was just the fifth player to score 70 points in an NBA game, joining Wilt Chamberlain (who did it six times), Elgin Baylor, David Thompson, and David Robinson. Kobe made his 72nd point a few seconds later at 4:23, and thus surpassing Baylor for most in Lakers history. He then surpassed Thompson (73 points in 1978) with a running shot inside the key, giving him 74 points. These points gave him the second highest point total in NBA history. Bosh fouled out the game on a Bryant attempted layup; he would hit the free throws to give him 76. At 1:47 left in the game, Bryant was fouled on a three-point attempt by Joey Graham. He would make all three free throws to give him 79. By this point, the Lakers had taken full control of the game with a 120–102 score, but no one had left at the Staples Center due to Bryant's night. Bryant's 80th and 81st points came in the last seconds of the game after he was fouled on a drive to the hoop. He hit both and was taken out of the game and given a long standing ovation. In the second half, Kobe outscored the entire Raptors team 55–41.

1986

The game, which the Lakers trailed 63–49 at halftime and 71–53 in the third quarter, saw Bryant play 42 minutes, shooting 28-of-46 from the field, including 7-of-13 on three-pointers, with 55 points in the second half. The game occurred during Bryant's extraordinary scoring season in 2005–06, which not only included scoring 81 points, but outscoring the entire Dallas Mavericks team (62–61) through three quarters on December 20, 2005, 40 points or more in 27 games, and six games of 50 points or more. As such, he led the league with 35.4 points per game (PPG) that season, the highest PPG total since Michael Jordan’s 37.09 in 1986–87.

1986

Three years later, Kobe Bryant would have another historic scoring night. On February 2, 2009, he set a record for the most points at Madison Square Garden, scoring 61 points in a 126-117 Los Angeles Lakers win over the New York Knicks. He surpassed his boyhood icon, Michael Jordan, who held the record for a cumulative twenty-two years and ten months. Jordan originally set the record in 1986 with 50 points and broke his own record when he scored 55 points in his fifth game back from retirement in 1995. Bryant's MSG record would later be broken when Knicks' forward Carmelo Anthony scored 62 points on January 24, 2014, against the Charlotte Bobcats.

2003

Kobe Bryant and the Lakers had won three consecutive championships from 2000–2002 and had been marketed as potentially the league's next Michael Jordan. However, his image took a hit after he was accused of sexual assault in 2003, and was seen as a contributing factor for his public feud and eventual break-up with co-star Shaquille O'Neal, which led to O'Neal being traded to Miami after the 2003–04 season. Adding more fuel to the fire was when ex-coach Phil Jackson, who had just stepped down after the Lakers upset defeat to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals, called Bryant "uncoachable" and "selfish" in his book, The Last Season: A Team in Search of Its Soul. In 2004–05, without O'Neal, Jackson, or Bryant's best friend on the team Derek Fisher, the Lakers failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1993–94, with Bryant missing 16 games due to various injuries.

January 22, 2006

On January 22, 2006, Kobe Bryant scored a career-high 81 points for the Los Angeles Lakers in a 122–104 win over the Toronto Raptors. Bryant scored what was at the time the most points scored since the NBA–ABA merger and second-most points in a single-game in NBA history (since surpassed by Bam Adebayo's 83-point game in 2026 against the Washington Wizards).

January 22, 2006

On January 22, 2006, much of the sporting world's attention in America was placed on the NFL's AFC and NFC Championship Games. Earlier in the day, the Pittsburgh Steelers punched their ticket to Super Bowl XL and the Seattle Seahawks and Carolina Panthers game was kicking off just as the Lakers and Raptors game was starting. For the Lakers broadcast team, there was a scheduling conflict as the team's #1 play-by-play man, Joel Meyers, had a contractual duty to call the NFC Championship Game in Seattle for CBS radio. Filling in for Meyers, calling his first NBA game ever, was the FSN West pre-and-post studio host, Bill Macdonald. Calling the game on the radio for Los Angeles was Spero Dedes, his first year in the role as play-by-play man, and former Laker Mychal Thompson, on KLAC 570. The Lakers were coming off two consecutive losses: an overtime road loss to the Sacramento Kings, a 51-point effort from Bryant, and a blowout defeat to the rival Phoenix Suns, also on the road. Prior to that, the Lakers had been a season-high four games over .500, after a home win against former star Laker Shaquille O'Neal and Miami Heat on January 16. It was Kobe and the Lakers first win against Shaq after losing both games last season and on Christmas 2005 to the Heat. This was the second game at the Staples Center on January 22, as the Los Angeles Clippers had defeated the Golden State Warriors, 105–92, in a matinee tipoff. A few days following this game, the Lakers would embark on their annual Grammy roadtrip, playing seven games on the road in 12 days.

January 26, 2020

As requested by Bryant himself, his holding up one finger to salute the crowd as he was being taken out of the game was sculpted into a statue in Star Plaza outside of Crypto.com Arena, unveiled on February 8, 2024. Accompanying the statue was a sculpted box score of the game. Bryant was the sixth Lakers player and seventh team employee to be honored with a statue in Star Plaza, joining Shaquille O'Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Lakers announcer Chick Hearn. Kobe was not present during the statue unveiling, as he passed away four years earlier on January 26, 2020, in a helicopter accident along with eight others, including Bryant's daughter Gianna Bryant. On August 2, 2024, the Lakers unveiled a statue of Kobe and Gianna outside Crypto.com Arena. Both statues were sculpted by Julie Rotblatt-Amrany.