It goes without saying that for a country to take home the Gold Medal in any Olympic sport, it must possess players with skill levels worthy of achieving the peak of success.
This is no different in basketball, which has been a staple of the Summer Olympics since 1936.
Since that time, the game of basketball itself has evolved, becoming more offense-heavy as the years have gone on. With that, certain players have risen to the occasion, becoming stars by posting high numbers for their team and country in a single game on the biggest stage.
In some cases, the stars’ performances eventually led to them winning the Gold Medal for their team and country. The following are the five greatest individual performances in Olympic basketball history
The NBA is the peak basketball league of the world, and as such, the sport’s greatest players call that league home. But the greatest basketball player to never play in the NBA was Oscar Schmidt, and he owns multiple Olympic basketball records, including the greatest individual performance in its history.
During the 1988 Summer Olympics, the Brazilian Mão Santa put up a staggering 55 points in a game against Spain, which occurred on September 24 of that year. Interestingly, Schmidt and Brazil would go on to lose that game by a score of 118-110, and both Brazil and Spain would lose in the first round of the tournament.
However, that does not diminish the greatness of Oscar Schmidt, who had the most points of any basketball player in the entire world with 49,973, until LeBron James passed him (James now has 50,246). Schmidt’s offensive prowess was like no other Olympic player, and it only makes sense that he owns the record for most points put up in a single Olympic game.Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Summer Olympics were delayed until the summer of 2021. Perhaps that delay helped Luka Dončić , who was able to get another year of development in the NBA under his belt, and used that to his advantage in the Olympics.
Dončić represented Slovenia in that year’s Olympics (as that is his country of origin). On July 26, 2021, Slovenia was taking on Argentina in the preliminary round, and Dončić would explode for 48 points, along with five assists.