2. Michael Jordan, 55 points: Mar. 28, 1995
From 1984 to 1993, Michael Jordan ruled basketball. It took him until age 27 to finally win that illustrious championship. Then a second. Then a third.
After the 1993 NBA Finals, Jordan walked away from the sport to play baseball for the Chicago White Sox’s minor league system. It didn’t work out in a year-plus, and the Knicks actually benefited with a trip to the 1994 NBA Finals in Jordan’s extended absence from the game.
In the second half of the 1994-95 season, “His Airness” returned to the hardwood for another go-around with the Chicago Bulls. The overall stats weren’t Jordan-esque at a career-low 41.1 percent shooting in 17 games, but that didn’t matter with what he did to New York on Mar. 28, 1995.
Now known as the “Double Nickel” game, Jordan obliterated Patrick Ewing and company for 55 points on 21-for-37 shooting at Madison Square Garden. It was the performance that brought arguably the game’s greatest player of all time “back,” since two of his first four games were duds.
Tha talent returned to Jordan in one night, à la the Monstars in Space Jam. He still found some difficulties in the rest of the 1995 part of that season, but by the time the playoffs arrived, there was no longer a thought.
Jordan’s 55 points goes down as the most memorable performance of any non-Knick. Who to wear the blue and orange has this title though?