Today in 1990 was a big day for a high school basketball player who would become one of the biggest names in the WNBA.
It’s the day Lisa Leslie scored 101 points in just 16 minutes.
Back then Leslie played for Inglewood Morningside High School in California.
They were playing South Torrance High.
She dominated pretty much the whole game, scoring 49 points in the first quarter and 52 in the second.
Leslie hit 27 free throws and 37 field goals, and note that she said later that when she was making those shots from the floor, she typically had all five South Torrance players guarding her!
At halftime Morningside had 102 points (one of Leslie’s teammates had scored a point) and South Torrance had just 23.
And that was the game.
As sometimes happens, the South Torrance coach decided not to send the team back out onto the court to start a second half where they trailed by 79 points.
That meant Leslie wasn’t able to go after the single game record of 105 points set by another great, Cheryl Miller.
Still, she ended up doing ok.
After high school, Lisa Leslie played for the University of Southern California, where she was named National Player of the Year in 1994.
She won two titles and three MVP awards in the WNBA, as well as four Olympic gold medals.
It was while competing in the Olympics, that she did set a scoring record: 35 points in a single game.
The athletes in the Winter Olympics are all trying to win those gold medals, but if they don’t quite get there, here’s maybe a consolation prize.
A study published last fall in the Journal of Health Economics found that SILVER medalists on average live an extra year longer than gold medalists and go on to make more money than the first pace finishers too.
I guess you’d call that a silver lining, right?
That One Time: Lisa Leslie Scored 101 Points in a High School Game (24/7 Live Culture)
Olympians That Win Silver Tend To Live Longer Than Those That Win Gold (UNILAD)
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