Bradley Beal became the first player since Kobe Bryant to score 50 points on back-to-back nights when he dropped a career-high 55 in the Washington Wizards‘ 137-134 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night.
Beal shot 58% from the field — including 8 of 13 from 3-point range, one night after he shot 56% in a 53-point performance in a loss to the Chicago Bulls.
Bryant, who was honored in a memorial service in Los Angeles on Monday morning, scored 60 against Memphis and 50 against New Orleans on March 22-23, 2007 — the final two contests of his historic four-game streak of scoring 50 points or more.
Unlike Bryant’s Lakers, who won all four of those games, Beal’s Wizards lost both of his 50-plus games, and the eighth-year guard joined Wilt Chamberlain, James Harden, and Devin Booker as the only players in NBA history to score 50 in consecutive games and lose twice. Beal is the first to do it on back-to-back nights.
Beal also became the first Wizards player in franchise history to score 50 in consecutive games. Since the franchise rebranded as the Wizards in 1997, only Michael Jordan had scored even 45 points in back-to-back games for Washington.