Former Wichita State basketball star goes viral after breaking Taiwan scoring record
Cleanthony Early built an All-American career on the Wichita State men’s basketball team with his tenacious scoring, an ability that hasn’t faded in the eight years since his college playing days ended.
In fact, the 6-foot-8 forward may be at his zenith of bucket-getting in his age 31 season of professional basketball.
Early delivered his magnum opus on Sunday, scoring a career-high 56 points to break the Taiwan T1 League scoring record and help his team, the Taiwan Beer HeroBears, to a 112-108 win.
The performance was Early at his peak: draining difficult jump shot after difficult jump shot, then letting his opponent know about it in his Bronx bravado.
Because of his NBA past as a New York Knicks draft pick, Early’s record-setting scoring show went viral on Twitter on Sunday. He finished the game shooting 51% from the field (21 of 41) and made 10 of 12 free throws to go along with five rebounds, seven assists, two steals and one block in 44 minutes.
In his first three games in Taiwan, Early is averaging 38.3 points, 4.7 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.0 blocks per game while shooting 57.1% from the field. He is playing in the same T1 League that features former NBA MVP Dwight Howard.
After being drafted No. 34 overall in the 2014 NBA Draft, Early played in 56 total games with the Knicks from 2014-16. He then bounced around in the NBA D-League (now the G League) before transitioning to a successful international career, where he has spent time in the Dominican Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela and South Africa before landing in Taiwan for the 2022-23 season.
Early was a crucial piece in two of the best seasons in Wichita State history, as he helped the Shockers to the 2013 Final Four and then became just the fifth consensus All-American in program history in 2014 to help lead WSU to a record-breaking 35-0 start. He scored 1,135 career points in just two seasons, which is the third-most by a Shocker in a two-year span behind only Xavier McDaniel and Dave Stallworth.
This story was originally published December 5, 2022 at 6:28 AM.
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