Lebanese player hits 113 points
A player seeing action in Lebanon's FLBB Division A League scored a phenomenal 113 points in a league playoff game last night in Beirut, according to an article in the FIBA-Asia website fibaasia.net.
Mohammad El Akkari, a guard playing for Mouttahed of Tripoli, torched the hoops with a mind-boggling 69 field goal attempts, connecting on 32-of-59 triples, 8-of-10 two-point shots, and one free throw to lead his team to a 173-141 victory over Bejjeh.
No details were available on the number of minutes Akkari played, but even if we assume he played the entire 40 minutes, that will come out to nearly two field goal attempts per minute, 1.73 to be exact. His shooting percentage is also noteworthy: 40-of-69 translates into an impressive 58% shooting clip and his 32-of-59 on threes comes out to an equally impressive 54%.
But what makes his feat truly remarkable is the fact that Akkari had been averaging only 7.6 points per game in 23 previous games for Mouttahed this season. After his 113-point game, Akkari's average will now go up to a modest 12 points per game.
Since this was a final eight game and since Akkari wasn't much of a scorer earlier in the season, this wasn't simply a case of a high-scoring ball hog piling up the points against a weak team, which is usually the case when a player goes off for that many points.
Akkari's feat put him in good company as far as Asian records are concerned. Specifically, he joins a couple of Filipino players in the elite list. According to FIBA-Asia, "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 Philippines."
It's nice to see FIBA-Asia mention Teng, and Salvador was a piece of trivia that was also good to hear about, but if we go by the article's descriptions of the feat, namely "instance of a player scoring more than 100 points in an official game played in any of the leagues in FIBA Asia National Federations" and "instances of more than 100 points in a single game in Asia", then ex-PBA imports Michael Hackett and Tony Harris should also be on the list.
Hackett scored 105 points for Ginebra in a 197-168 win over Great Taste 1985, while Harris pumped in 105 in a 151-147 Swift victory over in Ginebra in 1992, although to be fair, PBA games run for 48 minutes while Akkari, Teng and Salvador all accomplished their feats in 40-minute games.
In any case, this is the first time a player in Asia who was neither a Filipino nor was playing in the Philippines has scored more than 100 points in a single game. Kudos to Akkari for putting on such a fine shooting display.
Eddy Terrace of Belgium holds the single-game record for most points scored in a FIBA tournament. Terrace scored 63 against Albania in a Eurobasket (the European equivalent of FIBA-Asia) match in 1957. The FIBA World Championship record is 54 set by Hur Jae of South Korea in 1990, while the Olympic record is 55 set by the legendary Oscar Schmidt of Brazil in the 1988 Olympics. Micheal Madanly of Syria holds the FIBA-Asia record with 42 against Kuwait in 2007.
E-mail: sid_ventura@yahoo.com. Twitter: @Sid_Ventura.
