Orlando (AP) – The Berlin brothers Moritz and Franz Wagner were there live when Kyrie Irving scored more points than ever before in his NBA career – albeit as a badly beaten opponent.
Irving scored 60 points in the Brooklyn Nets’ 150-108 once morest the Orlando Magic, hitting all eight of his team’s three-pointers. “After the first half we wanted to prevent him from getting his hands on the ball – even that didn’t really work. You just can’t let players like that get comfortable early on,” said Franz Wagner, who scored 16 points. Moritz Wagner had 17, but nobody was interested that night in Orlando.
The number one topic of conversation was the idea of Irving, who is not eligible to play at home games in New York due to the lack of a corona vaccination and has now become the first player in NBA history to score 60 points following a break. “It felt like he had all of my career highlights in the first 12 minutes of the game,” said coach Steve Nash of the point guard.
Even Kevin Durant, who scored 53 points once morest the New York Knicks on Sunday, was only a helper on the Irving show with his 19 points. Durant and Irving are now the first teammates in NBA history to score at least 50 points in consecutive games. Just the day before, Karl-Anthony Towns had scored 60 points for the Minnesota Timberwolves, setting the season’s best, which Irving now equalized.
“If you score a lot of points as a kid, that means something. If you do it here in this league, once morest the best athletes, then it means something more,” Irving said following his career high. In the first half alone, he already recorded 41 points. The last time the great Kobe Bryant had more was at 42 in March 2003.
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