I saw a post about the April 11, 2014 game where Corey Brewer scored 51 points on 19/30 shooting, calling it the most random 50-point game in NBA history. I was curious about just how accurate this statement was, so I decided to do some research to see if that holds up

My first task was to determine how many players had only scored 50+ points only 1 time (regular season only), as doing it more than once felt like it took a level of randomness out of it. Using Basketball Reference, I determined there were 95 such players. From there, I wanted to determine who had the lowest career PPG average from that group, as a 50-point game would stand out more on their resume. Doing so left me with 2 candidates as the players with the 2 lowest career averages, Walt Wesley (8.5 PPG), a C who played for 7 teams between 1966-76, and Corey Brewer (8.7 PPG)

Now that would seem to make Wesley's game more random, but I wanted to dive deeper. During the season Wesley scored 50 (1970-71), he averaged 17.7 PPG, whereas in Brewer's 2013-14 season he averaged 12.3 PPG. Furthermore, Wesley had 10 other games in his career where he scored 30+ points, whereas Brewer never had a single other game in his entire career where he did so (his 2nd highest scoring game is a 29 point outing in 2012-13). Wesley did have a pretty weird career (the season after his 50 he averaged 12.2 PPG, and those are the only 2 years where he averaged double-digits), but during that 2-year prime he scored like a relatively high-level scorer at times. Brewer on the other hand never even came within 20 points of that career high, so to me when you combine his career average, his average that season, and his other career highs, Brewer's 50-game IS the most statistically random 50-point game in NBA history.