173 Points, Zero Threes: Where Are the Suns of the Highest-Scoring Game in Franchise History Now?
Today in Suns History: November 10, 1990
Thirty-six years ago tonight, at the old Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the Phoenix Suns put up a number that has never been touched in franchise history: 173 points in a 173–143 win over the Denver Nuggets.
That 173 is still the Suns' franchise record, and it's tied for the most points ever scored by any NBA team in a regulation game. Phoenix poured in 50 points in the first quarter and 57 in the second for 107 first-half points, which remains the NBA record for most points in a half. The two teams combined for 174 points before halftime, also a record.
Here's the part that blows modern minds:
The Night the Three-Pointer Took the Night Off
The Suns scored 173 points and made zero three-pointers. Not one. They went 0-for-2 from deep and didn't care.
Every one of Phoenix's 173 points came from just two places:
- 134 points on two-pointers: 67 made field goals on 104 attempts (64.4%), every single one of them inside the arc
- 39 points at the free-throw line: 39-of-48
- 0 points from three: 0-of-2
The only other team to score 173 in regulation, the 1959 Boston Celtics, didn't have a three-point line to shoot from. The line arrived in 1979–80. So in the more than four decades of the three-point era, no NBA team has scored more points in a regulation game than the 1990 Suns, and they did it without making one.
The whole game featured exactly two made threes, both by Denver. Today's teams routinely take dozens a night. On November 10, 1990, the Suns got to 173 the old-fashioned way: they ran, they passed (50 assists on 67 baskets), they got to the rim, and they got to the line.
How It Happened, Quarter by Quarter
Phoenix became the first NBA team to score 50 or more points in two different quarters of the same game. The 57 in the second quarter remains one of the highest-scoring quarters in league history.
The previous first-half record had been 90, set just three days earlier by these same Nuggets in a loss at San Antonio. It lasted 72 hours.
Denver actually won the second half 76–66. It didn't matter.
Every Point of the 173
Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons got scoring from all ten players he used, and five of them reached 20. One fun twist: the bench (87 points) outscored the starters (86).
So where are the men who scored them? Let's catch up.
The Starters
Kevin Johnson: 23 of the 173 (13.3%)
23 points, 17 assists, 5 steals. KJ ran the show like a conductor that night, setting up teammates for 17 of the Suns' 50 assists. The Suns retired his No. 7 in 2001, and his second act turned out to be every bit as high-profile as his first. Johnson returned to his hometown and served two terms as mayor of Sacramento from 2008 to 2016, the first Sacramento native elected to the job. He's widely credited with keeping the Kings in town and getting a new downtown arena built. Today he's still a fixture in Sacramento, leading business ventures like Seven Ventures and the Black Capital fund and staying involved with St. HOPE, the Oak Park community organization he founded in 1989, the year before this game.
Dan Majerle: 21 of the 173 (12.1%)
21 points, 13 assists, 7 rebounds. "Thunder Dan" did a bit of everything in the record game, including 13 assists from the wing. Fittingly for a guy who would later make 17 threes in a single NBA Finals, he didn't need one that night: like every Sun, every basket he made was a two. Majerle never really left the Valley. Two years after this game, in December 1992, he opened Majerle's Sports Grill a block from the Suns' arena, and the restaurant brand is still going more than three decades later. After his playing days he worked as a Suns TV analyst, went into the Ring of Honor in 2003, served as a Suns assistant from 2008 to 2013, and then spent seven seasons as head coach at Grand Canyon University, guiding the program through its move to Division I. He entered the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame in 2017.
Tom Chambers: 20 of the 173 (11.6%)
20 points in just 29 minutes. Chambers didn't even need two-thirds of the game to get his 20. Two years earlier he had made history as the first unrestricted free agent in NBA history when he signed with Phoenix, and eight months before this game he dropped a franchise-record 60 points on Seattle. "TC" finished his career with more than 20,000 points and became the first inductee to the Ring of Honor after it moved into the then-new downtown arena in 1999. Utah retired his college No. 42. He never left Phoenix either: he settled in Scottsdale, works in community relations for the team, and is still on your TV as the studio analyst on Suns Game Time alongside Tom Leander heading into the 2026–27 season.
Mark West: 16 of the 173 (9.2%)
16 points on a perfect 8-of-8 from the floor. Perfect is perfect. West was the most efficient player in the building. Off the court West was always the guy with a plan: he has been a licensed stockbroker since 1992 and was profiled by Fortune for it while he was still playing. He joined the Suns' front office in 2001 as assistant general manager, spent years as vice president of player programs helping young players with life skills and finances, and even returned to the bench as an assistant coach under his old teammate Jeff Hornacek in 2013. Few people have spent more of their lives in purple and orange.
Kurt Rambis: 6 of the 173 (3.5%)
6 points. The goggled grinder did the dirty work on a night built for scorers. Rambis is best remembered as a Showtime Laker, and that's where his post-playing career took him: a long run as a Lakers assistant, a head coaching stint with Minnesota, time as associate head coach of the Knicks, and then a return to Los Angeles as a senior basketball advisor in 2018. He remains one of the most influential voices in the Lakers' front office, and as recently as this summer he was reported to be helping run the team's executive search.
The Bench (87 of the 173)
Cedric Ceballos: 32 of the 173 (18.5%)
32 points on 12-of-15 shooting, off the bench. The star of the night was a second-round rookie. Ceballos, the 48th pick in the 1990 draft, scored more than one of every six Phoenix points without starting. He'd go on to win the 1992 Slam Dunk Contest with his famous blindfolded dunk, then make the All-Star team with the Lakers in 1995. After the NBA he became a familiar voice inside the Suns' arena as an in-game emcee. He has had real health battles, including two stents placed in his heart and a frightening 20-day ICU stay with COVID-19 in 2021, and he came out the other side. He has since been inducted into the Southern California Basketball Hall of Fame.
Kenny Battle: 23 of the 173 (13.3%)
23 points, 10 rebounds, 5 steals. By most accounts this was the best game of Kenny Battle's NBA career. The Suns waived him about two months later, and he went on to brief stops elsewhere in the league. But Battle was already a legend before he got to Phoenix, as the captain and high-flying face of Illinois' 1989 "Flyin' Illini" Final Four team, and he went into the Illinois Athletics Hall of Fame in 2023. Today he lives in his hometown of Aurora, Illinois, coaches youth basketball, and in 2025 became president of the Chicago chapter of the National Basketball Retired Players Association.
Bonus twist: on the other bench, Denver's Marcus Liberty was his Flyin' Illini teammate. And the Nuggets' Anthony Cook was the player Phoenix drafted and traded away on the night it acquired Battle's rights. All three played in this game.
Jeff Hornacek: 12 of the 173 (6.9%)
12 points and 7 assists. Hornacek was the third option behind Chambers and Johnson on those late-'80s and early-'90s Suns. He was traded to Philadelphia in the 1992 Charles Barkley deal and later became a beloved Utah Jazz sharpshooter whose No. 14 hangs in the rafters in Salt Lake City. He came back to Phoenix as head coach in 2013, winning 48 games in his first season, then coached the Knicks from 2016 to 2018 and spent two seasons as a Houston Rockets assistant. Since 2022 he has worked as a coaching consultant with the Jazz.
Eddie Johnson: 12 of the 173 (6.9%)
12 points off the bench. EJ, the 1989 Sixth Man of the Year, gave the Suns 12 quick points. If you watch the Suns today, you already know where he is: Johnson is in his 27th season as a Suns television analyst in 2026–27, calling games with play-by-play voice Kevin Ray. He's also a regular on SiriusXM NBA Radio, works as a motivational speaker, and has never been shy about speaking his mind on the modern game, including, presumably, how many threes everybody takes now.
Tim Perry: 8 of the 173 (4.6%)
8 points, 10 rebounds, 4 steals, 3 blocks. Perry was the quiet stat-sheet stuffer of the night. The Temple product and No. 7 overall pick in 1988 was also part of the 1992 Barkley trade to Philadelphia; Barkley later joked about Perry wearing No. 34. Perry played in the NBA through 1996, then took his game overseas, winning Spain's Copa del Rey with Valencia in 1998. After retiring in 2001 he went back to the Philadelphia area to coach at Holy Family University and earned his degree from Neumann University in 2011. Bonus trivia: Shaquille O'Neal has said Perry dunked on him.
The Man on the Sideline
Cotton Fitzsimmons: Head Coach
Fitzsimmons took over a 28-win team and turned it into a perennial contender built on pace and unselfish passing. Fifty assists in one game is about as Cotton as it gets. He is in the Suns Ring of Honor, and he passed away in 2004. His fingerprints are still all over this franchise.
The Other Bench
Denver's side of this night is a story of its own. It includes a Suns legend wearing a Nuggets uniform, a coach whose system gave up a record 130.8 points a game that season, and a team that scored 143, won the second half, and still lost by 30. Read the Nuggets' side: 143 Points and a 30-Point Loss: The Night Denver's 1990 Nuggets Ran Into History.
One Night, Ten Different Paths
A mayor. A restaurateur and college coach. A TV voice for nearly three decades. A front-office lifer. A Lakers power broker. A dunk champion. A Hall of Fame Illini. Thirty-six years later, the ten Suns who scored 173 points have scattered across the basketball world. That number is still theirs, and so are the 107 first-half points and the zero threes.
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