McCollum drops 50 points in 3 quarters vs. Bulls

CJ McCollum had himself a night to remember on Wednesday.

Having already etched his name in the Portland Trail Blazers record books with a 28-point first quarter, McCollum continued his unmitigated, disrespectful assault on the Chicago Bulls, finishing with a career-high 50 points in just 29 minutes as he sat out the entire fourth quarter of a 124-108 Blazers win.

McCollum joins James Harden as the only players to score 50 through three quarters this season, and joins Klay Thompson as the only players to ever finish with 50 or more in a game in which they played fewer than 30 minutes (Thompson dropped 60 in 29 last season). He's the seventh Blazers player to reach the 50-point plateau, following Damian Lillard, Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, Damon Stoudamire, Clyde Drexler, and Geoff Petrie.

From the jump, McCollum was in some kind of zone, hitting every conceivable manner of shot; step-backs, pullups out of the pick-and-roll, catch-and-shoot threes, fadeaways, running bank shots, hanging floaters, driving layups ... you get the picture. The Blazers kept feeding him the ball, the Bulls kept electing to play him straight up, and he kept scoring. He got his 50 on just 29 shooting possessions, as he went 18-of-25 from the field, 6-of-9 from deep, and 8-of-8 from the line, good for a cool 87.7 percent true shooting mark.

McCollum might have challenged Lillard's single-game franchise record of 59, but alas, he and his team were a bit too good. Thanks mostly to McCollum's exploits, the Blazers built an unassailable 27-point lead after three quarters, turning the entire fourth into garbage time. McCollum was justifiably exempted, even as the Moda Center crowd chanted "We want CJ!" for the majority of the anticlimactic final frame.