Lest We Forget: When Luka scored 73 in Atlanta
Dončić goes boldly where few have ever gone before on unforgettable night in Georgia
This is why we are here.
Yes, I am thrilled we are here together on #Sturmstack now for a thousand reasons, but near the top of the list – as proven by the title of my very first post here – now I can write about Luka if I want to write about Luka.
If I care about something, I will write about it.
That means this. This is the mandate. When something in the sport world is on my mind, I want you to know that I will go down that sports-nerd rabbit hole when time allows.
For all my years working for others writing Dallas Cowboys content, I have never been able to say “we can get to that next time, because today, I want to commemorate Luka Dončić’s night in Atlanta from last week before it gets away from us.”
So here we are:
My favorite thing about being a sports-nerd and really not needing fiction or scripted shows in my life is that there is an element of all of these games that offer you a chance at something you have never seen. And those things, usually in the form of a special effort from a team or individual, can happen on any night in any place.
But, once in a while, we are paying attention to that random Friday night in January amidst a string of unenjoyable nights of 2023-24 Dallas Mavericks basketball. And when it happens, we absolutely call our friends to make sure they are watching, too. In my case, I was at the Ticket’s 30th Birthday Party and the whispers kept updating us on his big night. It was the main topic after while, because the numbers were too nutty.
Dončić scored 73 in Atlanta on the anniversary of the passing of Kobe Bryant. Kobe once dazzled us with 81 in a game I witnessed on League Pass and it both broke our brains and made us wonder if 100 is actually possible someday. I doubt it, but I do know this: There are only four humans to ever score 73 points in a NBA game.
Wilt, Kobe, David Thompson, and Luka freaking Dončić.
I remember as a kid reading the newspaper one day in 1984 and reading that Wayne Gretzky had a game where he scored 8 points. Four goals and four assists and my mind could not process it. I wanted to know more and clipped the boxscore just so you could see his name so many times in a 12-8 win for Edmonton against the Minnesota North Stars. There were 20 goals in one game and each team had 36 shots.
Again, I am surely telling my friends in 6th grade about this as they try to ignore me.
Could this have all been true? And if it was, is there a way I can see it? Amazingly, yes. It has been put on Youtube during COVID and I do plan on watching it someday soon – heck, maybe that will be its own post in the middle of the summer!
Regardless, since you have paid to read what I am interested in, I want to make sure that this post occurs. I want to make sure that in five years, if you have a child that is reading about the Mavericks and they ask you about this night, you can point them here. Because, as an old sports-nerd who markets to young ones, I want to make sure that there is a written record of Luka’s 73. That January night in 2024 in Atlanta.