In the following 1964–65 NBA season, West averaged 31.0  points (at the time, a career-high), only surpassed by perennial scoring champion Wilt Chamberlain. After ending the regular season with 49 wins, L.A. played the Baltimore Bullets in the first round of the 1965 NBA Playoffs, but then team captain Baylor suffered a career-threatening knee injury. West spectacularly took over Baylor's leading role, as he scored 49  points and willed the shocked Lakers to the win. In Game 2, Baltimore was unable to stop the Lakers guard, who scored 52  points, nearly half of L.A.'s  total, in the 118–115 win. The Bullets took their two home games, despite West scoring 44 and 48  points respectively, but in the decisive Game 5 in L.A., the guard helped beat the Bullets with 42  points in a close 117–115 win. West averaged 46.3  points per game, a figure that is still an NBA record. However, in the 1965 NBA Finals, the Celtics easily beat the short-handed Lakers, 4–1. In Game 1, which Boston easily won, defensive Celtics guard K. C. Jones kept West to only 26  points, and in Game 2, West scored 45  points, but Boston still won 129–123. In Game 3, West scored 49 points, and L.A. finally won a game, but in Games 4 and 5, the Lakers were beaten by double digits; in the last quarter of Game 5, West missed 14 of 15 shots and could not prevent yet another Celtics win. Still, the Lakers guard finished the playoffs with 40.6 points per game.
