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SportsGrid Christmas Throwback: Watch Bernard King Demolish The Nets In 1984

Tomorrow’s Christmas, so why not send you into it with a performance that even those of you who don’t celebrate this particular holiday can appreciate? That’s right, I’m talking about what might be the greatest individual effort any NBA player has ever put forth on Christmas: Bernard King’ 60 points against the Nets in 1984. Prime King was a night-unstoppable scoring machine (he averaged 32.9 a night in ’84-’85 on 53 percent shooting), but on this night, he was in another realm. He had 40 by halftime. He hit 19 of 30 from the floor, got to the line 26 times, and made 22 of those. Watch it happen here:

Of course, if you watched the video all the way through, you noticed something significant: the Knicks lost the game. How do you lose when your best player has a career night and you have a 10-point halftime lead? Well, the Knicks sucked that year. This loss was one of 58 on the season, including 12 losses in a row to end the year. King was a wizard for a while there, but even he couldn’t save this bunch. Oh well – at least the futility got the Knicks Patrick Ewing. Merry Christmas.

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