On March 2, 1962, Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single NBA game.

His final line that night: 48 minutes played, 100 points (on 36-of-63 shooting from the field and 28-of-32 shooting from the line), 25 rebounds and two assists.

In the nearly six decades that have passed since Wilt's remarkable achievement, the 100-point game has made its way into the same territory as Cal Ripken Jr.'s ironman streak, Joe DiMaggio's hit streak, John Stockton's assist record, Nolan Ryan's career strikeout record and Wayne Gretzky's career points record.

The list could go on, but you get the point. This record is unbreakable—though we once thought the same about Oscar Robertson's season-long triple-double average.

But is Wilt's 100 points on March 2, 1962, the most impressive single-game scoring performance in NBA history?

Believe it or not, there's quite a bit of subjectivity in answering that.

For example, which impresses you more: A) the 2005-06 Toronto Raptors (29th in defense that season) on which Kobe Bryant dropped 81; or B) Darrall Imhoff (112th out of 177 qualified players in win shares per 48 minutes over the course of his career) and Cleveland Buckner (723 total minutes in the NBA), two players who saw a bunch of Wilt's 100 scored on them?

"The Knicks had two 6'10" centers, but one [Phil Jordon] didn't play, and the other, Imhoff, fouled out in the fourth quarter after having played just 20 minutes," Gary M. Pomerantz wrote of the 100-point performance for The Post Game. "That meant that the Dipper had a five-inch and 50-pound advantage over the next-biggest Knick for 28 minutes that night."

Toronto head coach Sam Mitchell's refusal to adjust and throw a double-team at Kobe during his 81-point game is another consideration.

"My opinion—and I said it multiple times during that game—how about we consider double-teaming him?" ESPN's Jalen Rose recalled about that night. "As a matter of fact, triple-teaming him? Allow Smush Parker, allow Luke Walton, allow—how about this?—someone else in the stands to actually beat you? We didn't get the memo. Once he got hot, it was curtains."

Regardless of what caveats we throw at either performance, 100 points is 100 points. Eighty-one is 81.

With so much debate when it comes to the question at hand, an attempt at objectivity is in order. Maybe neither one is the most impressive scoring performance in league history.

The number we'll use here is the points above average scored in a single game, and we'll limit the sample to the 544 individual 50-point games in NBA history (regular and postseason combined).

The methodology devised by NBA Math's Adam Fromal goes as follows:

• Divide the player's points by his shot attempts for that game.
• Divide the number of points scored in the NBA that season by the number of shots attempted to get the league average (ideally, we'd use the average allowed by the player's opponent, but that data is not available for many of the games that took place before the ABA-NBA merger).
• Then subtract the league-average points per shot from the player's points per shot.
• Multiply that answer by the number of attempts the player took in that game.

Using that number gives us the following non-Wilt top 10:

That's right. Willie Burton.

Are you surprised? I certainly was.

On December 13, 1994, Philadelphia 76ers forward Willie Burton scored 53 points on 12-of-19 shooting from the field and 24-of-28 from the line.

Among the 1,050 three-point-era players with at least as many career minutes, Burton ranks 972nd in box plus/minus. But on that night, his game was prodigious.

Basketball Reference defines game score as a "rough measure of a player's productivity for a single game." Burton's December 13, 1994, box score gives him the 28th-best game score on record.

The rest of that top 10 is fairly predictable, with the possible exception of Kelly Tripucka's presence or Kobe's 81-point game being all the way down at No. 10.

When it comes to game score, Kobe's 81-pointer trails only Michael Jordan's 69-point game in March 1990 (it isn't tracked back to Chamberlain's career). Kobe's 46 attempts (tied for 44th all time) are what suppressed his points over average.

Now, back to the question at hand: Where does Wilt's 100-point game stack up?

Wilt's 100-point game is not only first, but he has three other outings that crash the party, giving him control of 40 percent of the list. You add three more if you expand to a top 20.

Again, there's room for debate. With more data from Wilt's era, we may find that that season's New York Knicks gave up slightly more points per shot than the league average. In fact, that may be likely, given New York's sixth-place finish in defense out of nine teams.

That might lower his points over average just enough for Burton to pass him, but ultimately, this question gets back to the following answer: 100 points is 100 points.

Regardless of the physical advantages Chamberlain had over his contemporaries, or the way that particular game broke down in the fourth quarter (as explained by Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal), it's a feat that deserves every bit of mythology surrounding it.

"[Wilt's] performance looms as the statistical Everest of sports," Pomerantz wrote. "...and the only single-triple in NBA history."

Zach Lowe of ESPN and the Lowe Post joins this week's The Full 48 with Howard Beck to answer some burning questions concerning tampering, Jimmy Butler and LeBron James.