Luka Doncic scores 73 points – tied for 4th most by a player in an NBA game
By Jason Hanna and Homero De la Fuente, CNN
(CNN) — Luka Doncic and Joel Embiid have now done in one week what only eight other players have done in NBA history – score more than 70 points in a game.
Doncic, the Dallas Mavericks’ star guard, scored 73 points Friday night in his team’s 148-143 road win against Atlanta – a tally that is tied for fourth highest by a player in one NBA contest.
Only Wilt Chamberlain (100 points and 78 points in the 1960s) and Kobe Bryant (81 in 2006) scored more in an NBA game. Besides Doncic, Chamberlain and David Thompson (1978) also finished a game with 73.
“Get a win, man. We’ve been struggling lately – the mindset was get a win,” Doncic said about his Mavericks (25-20) after the game. “We played great. We struggled a little bit on defense, but we played great on offense.”
The Slovenian becomes the 10th player in NBA history to score at least 70 points in a game, and the second in the past week after Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers star center, dropped 70 points in a victory against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday.
Doncic scored early and often Friday, opening the first half with 41 points against the Hawks – a team that drafted Doncic in 2018 but promptly traded him for Trae Young and a draft pick.
Doncic shot 25-33 from the field over the entire game, and had 10 rebounds and seven assists. His 73 points are a franchise record and a career record – his previous career high was 60.
“I was just going, you know, whatever the defense give me. The second half, they doubled me all the time, so I tried to make some plays, and sometimes I would break the double. So, just seeing the game,” Doncic said.
Young led the Hawks in scoring Friday with 30 points.
Doncic’s performance Friday comes after a home loss to the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday, during which Doncic had security remove a heckling fan from the stands at Dallas’ American Airlines Center. That led to a tense exchange Wednesday night with a reporter who’d asked him about the incident, with Doncic saying that he normally wouldn’t ask for a fan’s ejection, “but I had enough.”
When asked to elaborate on the situation on “NBA on TNT” Thursday, Doncic said he probably shouldn’t have alerted security to the heckling fan. “I was really frustrated that we were losing. I twisted my ankle in the first half, it was just a lot of emotions. Probably shouldn’t have done that. When I’m wrong I admit it, so probably shouldn’t have done that. But it was just the whole game going on,” Doncic said about Wednesday’s game.
Doncic, who was named Thursday to his fourth NBA All-Star Game, was selected by the Hawks with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 Draft, before having his draft rights traded to the Mavericks for No. 5 pick Young and a 2019 first-round pick, which the Hawks used to select Cam Reddish.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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