Marina Mabrey Got 53 The Fun Way

“I score in bunches, and then sometimes kinda just level out,” Toronto Tempo guard Marina Mabrey said near the end of her press conference after the Tempo’s 125-97 win over the L.A. Sparks on Thursday. It was an accurate description of her own game, which is built on constant movement and a scalding but occasionally evanescent shooting touch. On Thursday night, however, we finally got to see what would happen if Mabrey never reached the “kinda just level out” phase. What if a whole game was just one big scoring bunch? Well, in that case, Mabrey would walk away with 53 points and a share of the WNBA single-game scoring record.

Save your tsking about stat-padding for the next gunner who goes for the record, because this is as pure as 53-point nights come. Mabrey went 17-of-28 from the floor, 9-of-18 from three-point range, and 10-of-12 from the free-throw line. And thanks to the quirks of the Tempo’s home arena, she wasn’t even aware that the record was in reach until she had 50 points.