If we're going to bring up other players' exploits against the
Knicks, nothing compares to Pete Maravich's 79 points, while
being guarded by 7-time all-defensive star Clyde Frazier.
As it ended, Pete had 68 points, more than any guard had ever scored in an NBA game. Only Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor had ever scored more. The line in the box score read: 26 of 43 from the floor, 16 of 19 from the line. From the distances recorded in the official running score, he would have had 79 if there had been a three-point line.
That's from Mark Kriegel's brilliant new book, "Pistol", a biography of the late floppy-socked genius whose life was as tormented as it was poetic, as constrained by family pull as it was free of earthly bonds. The particular game described came against the New York Knicks in 1977 (Pete played for the New Orleans Jazz), and he was guarded for most of the evening by Clyde Frazier, who had made the NBA's All Defensive team for seven consecutive years and is considered one of the great guard defenders of all time.
Didn't matter.
There were times when nothing mattered at all for Pete Maravich, when he was in a zone that was impenetrable and without reason.