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    Rare sighting of a half-century

    Once common in PBA's early days, 50-point games now an odd occurrence
    Jun 27, 2012
    by the numbers

    FIFTY-POINT games are now a rarity in the PBA. Fact is, the last two 50-point performances in the league happened four years apart.

    Zach Graham's 51-point game comes four years after the last half-century in the PBA. Photo by Jerome Ascano

    Last Friday, Air21 import Zach Graham had 51 points in a 128-121 win over Powerade that ended his team’s four-game losing streak in the PBA Governors Cup.

    Graham, a former University of Mississippi standout, went 3-for-6 from three-point range, 11-for-24 from the two-point area and made all but one of his 21 free-throw attempts to almost singlehandedly carry the Express to the win.

    The 23-year-old Graham became just the first player in the PBA to break the 50-point barrier since Purefoods import Darius Rice tallied 56 in a 127-126 double overtime win over Magnolia in the Fiesta Conference on April 2, 2008.

    Prior to Rice, the last player to record a 50-point game was Asi Taulava who recorded his career-high 51 points while still with Talk ‘N Text on May 16, 2004 in a 131-105 rout of Purefoods in the inaugural Fiesta Conference.

    * * *

    Graham has scored at least 31 points in each of his seven games for Air21 so far in the season-ending third conference. He is also averaging an incredible 39.0 points per game.

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    Those numbers are the highest in the PBA since Derrick Brown averaged 40.4 points for Sta. Lucia in the 2004 Fiesta Conference, the same conference where Taulava had his 51-point game.

    A former Purefoods import, Brown scored at least 38 points in 15 of his 16 games for the Realtors in that conference, including a streak of nine straight highlighted by a 57-point performance in a 120-99 loss to San Miguel Beer on April 25, 2004.

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