On February 26, 2023, the Portland Trail Blazers All-Star guard Damian Lillard led his team to a 131-114 win against the Houston Rockets, scoring a franchise and career-high point total of 71, on 57.9% shooting. Lillard's 71 points were made possible primarily by his three-point shooting, with 13 three-point shots made out of 22 attempts. He would only be one three-point shot away from tying the most three-pointers made in one game, set previously by Warriors guard Klay Thompson in 2018 with 14.
All eyes were on Lillard by the end of the first half of the game. He led his Blazers to a 73-58 halftime lead, on 41 points and 8 three-point shots made. Yahoo! Sports recalls, "Lillard got to 50 points by the end of the third quarter, though the Rockets cut the lead to 14 points after trailing by as many as 23 in the period. He pushed to 59 after a huge and-one dunk over Jabari Smith Jr. midway through the fourth quarter." He'd break his previous career high of 61 when he hit his 12th three-pointer of the night, a step-back shot, gravitating him closer to the 70 mark. With just under two minutes left in the game, Lillard would hit a driver floater to drive his total to 71.
"Lillard’s teammates continued looking for him in the closing minutes to try and get ahead of Mitchell’s total," CNN reported, "but after missing a couple of shots, he came off the court exhausted with 44 seconds left [on] the clock." After the Portland team surrounded Lillard after the game to celebrate, the NBA reportedly pulled Lillard aside to drug test him, which frustrated Lillard due to a supposed fear of needles.
"I know I've got a lot of tattoos, but when you're doing a blood draw, it's different from tattoos. It brought me down from here to floor," Lillard told ESPN, apparently "gesturing from above his head and then dropping his hand".
Lillard's 71-point outing made history, as it would place tied for eighth in most points scored in one game, tying San Antonio's David Robinson's 1994 performance, the Lakers' Elgin Baylor in 1960, and the Cavaliers' Donovan Mitchell, just earlier this year in January. Lillard's 41 points by halftime "tied with Kyrie Irving for the second-most scored in one half in the past 25 seasons, behind only 42 points from Bryant in 2003," according to Yahoo! Sports.
For Lillard's legacy, this is Lillard's fifth career 60-point game, and fifteenth career 50-point game. CBS Sports notes, "The only active player with more 50-point games than Lillard's 15 is James Harden, who has 23. But the most points Harden has ever scored in a single game is 61. Lillard has hit that mark twice and bested it once." In fact, Damian Lillard has more 60-point games than NBA legends like Stephen Curry, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Magic Johnson, among others, combined, as stated in a tweet by StatMuse. The 70-point performance goes to show how underrated Lillard is as an all-time scorer.
The NBA world had high support for Lillard after the historic night. "It really, really was a masterful performance," Blazers coach Chauncey Billups said, reported by ESPN. "It was a piece of art. That was incredible." Even Donovan Mitchell, who had previously scored 71 in a January match against the Chicago Bulls, had something to say.
Despite the big performance and the win, the Trail Blazers still only sit in 11th place in the Western Conference with a record of 29-31, but anything is possible with how close and competitive the West is.
"We've got 23, 22 games left after this, and we need to win as many as possible,” Lillard said on the court after the win, reported by Yahoo! Sports. “Obviously being short-handed, I know that it’s going to be a team effort, but I feel like I gotta do my best to be aggressive and just try to do what I can to make sure that we get some wins. That's all the case was tonight. I wanted to be in attack mode. I got it going, and I just stayed aggressive.”
Comments