A decade before Kobe Bryant welcomed Antawn Jamison to the Lakers in 2012 by posterizing him in practice, Jamison was a legit scorer on the Golden State Warriors. Legit enough for 20 and 10 almost every night.
During Jamison’s third season with the pre- “We Believe” Warriors, he averaged a career-high 24 points. And on December 3rd of 2000, he scored a career-high 51 against the Seattle Sonics. He also grabbed 14 rebounds to go with his 23-of-36 shooting night, but wasn’t able to grab a victory.
The very next night, the Warriors welcomed Kobe Bryant and the Lakers to town, and Jamison matched his career-high by scoring 51 again! Just as crazy as Jamison scoring back-to-back 50-point games was Kobe Bryant also scoring a then-career-high 51 in the game. Bryant did take six more shots and made three fewer, but that’s not anything to be ashamed of since Jamison connected on an impressive 21-of-29 shots. The cherry on top for Jamison was that the Warriors pulled off a 125-122 OT victory against the future champs as Kobe missed a three at the buzzer with Jamison guarding him.
In between the time of that game and Jamison joining the Lakers, Bryant would have his share of a lot more 50-point games, including four consecutive ones (65-50-60-50) in 2007, while Jamison never reached the 50-point mark again. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, either, because Jamison quietly kept doing his thing and crept into the top 50 scoring leaders of all-time. He currently sits at 44 — ahead of John Stockton, Bernard King, Scottie Pippen, Isiah Thomas, Tracy McGrady, Earl Monroe, Chris Mullin, Glen Rice, Kevin McHale, Dwyane Wade, and many other NBA greats.
KOBE ON JAMISON/JAMISON ON KOBE
Two years ago, Jamison also had an amusing story about Bryant and his mindset in games.
“This guy’s a different dude,” Jamison said of Bryant on ESPNLA 710 radio. “Kobe will tell you, He’s like, ‘Look, you guys as my teammates, yell at me. ‘ Let me know that you’re open, because I’m so programmed,’ and this guy has told me this: ‘I see nothing but that basket.’ You could be open, there could be three guys on me, but the only thing I see is that basket, so you have to tell me, Look, I was open. Or yell at me mid-play. That doesn’t affect me at all, and I respect that.’ ”