High Score (2019)

In the first episode of HIGH SCORE, we take a look at how the NBA record for single-game attempts has changed hands over the years. The three-pointer started as an experiment -- a gimmick borrowed from the weirder ABA that gained some popularity thanks to former players from that league. The first players to really run wild with it were members of the 1980s Denver Nuggets, one of the first NBA clubs to really embrace running and gunning. That team's primary shooter, Michael Adams, set the bar for three-point chucking at 20 attempts in a single game, and that would last for years, until some guys playing late-season games on broken, carefree teams figured they'd mess around and break a record. But nowadays, heaving threes is acceptable, and we've seen some incredible recent high scores coming from great players on great teams -- even in a WNBA playoff game. If three-point chucking is a game within the game of basketball, then there's never been a better time to thrive doing both.

From the early total base leaders the likes of Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig to today's leaders, Shawn Green and Josh Hamilton, the total base record has always required a player’s single best game of their career. Today, the best route to the top of the list is with MLB’s first five home run game, but it’s not the only way.

Why would someone foul out of an NBA game really fast? One of the NBA's strangest leaderboards features all kinds of players who, on one night or another, committed all six of their allotted fouls in just a few minutes. Like ... five or six. This episode of High Score figures out how and why those players made foul-out history, and a lot of it has to do with inexperienced or injured players facing impossible match-ups. But THE record -- the far-and-away high score in this game -- has a different story. It's a story that involves a familiar hacking strategy, a deep-bench player with almost no NBA career to speak of, and a mad scientist coach who seized the opportunity to combine those variables into his weirdest experiment yet.

A quarterback dropping back time after time and slinging the ball all over the field from start to finish may be a difficult concept for football's forefathers to grasp. After all, for the first few decades of the sport, the forward pass ranged from illegal to frowned upon. Then Davey O'Brien came along and turned the sport upside down with a 60-pass performance way back in 1940, when the forward pass was generally frowned upon and not far removed from being an altogether illegal transgression. O'Brien's single-game high score was untouchable for decades until some pioneers of volume passing came along when the 1960s rolled around. There are certain circumstances that have led to these heroic volume passers launching their score to another stratosphere, such as trying to climb back from a large deficit or a ground game that's stuck in neutral. But the hidden benefit is earning a spot on this list of royalty -- an honor so noble there was even one quarterback who, though barely ever seeing the field, went hard for the high score seemingly every time out. Or how the current man atop the throne did so as a 37-year-old against the most ferocious defense in history in a game that was close until the end.

How do you score 1,000 NBA points before your 20th birthday? Well, it helps to come into the league really young, which hasn't been possible since 2006. And it also helps to be on a very bad team that *needs* you to score tons of points. These are the stories of the players who checked one of those two boxes, and of course the story of the one player who most emphatically checked both: LeBron James. LeBron's got basically every record for youngest player to score X number of points, but the exact circumstances of his 1,000-point achievement are worth a deeper dive. That story involves Ricky Davis

In 2002, LaDainian Tomlinson tied the NFL single-game touches record with 48 against the Denver Broncos. But what, exactly, does it take to set a new high score?

Devin Hester. DeSean Jackson. Antonio Brown. These guys have some of the greatest punt returns of all time. The thing is, they have covered the sort of distance required to cement your name in Return of the Punt. The goal seems simple: cover as many yards as possible on your way to scoring a touchdown. But as those big names prove - it's not that easy. Find out how someone managed to return a punt over 100 yards, practically cementing his place in NFL history.

If your basketball team depends on you to handle the ball a lot -- to create for yourself, to pass to teammates, to draw fouls, and so on -- you might end up setting the wrong kind of record. This episode of HIGH SCORE examines the instances in NBA and WNBA history in which a single player has racked up a ton of turnovers. Like, as many turnovers as a whole team would typically commit. Our major finding is that you don't commit double-digit turnovers in one game because you suck. It happens because you're the star of your team, and the high usage that comes with stardom also invites risk. If you're playing alongside a depleted lineup, or facing an overwhelming defense, or just like to throw ambitious passes, you might find yourself in this episode.