Damian Lillard went off on Sunday night, and didn’t waste any time doing so at the Moda Center.
Lillard, after dropping 41 points in the first half, notched a career-high 71 points in the Portland Trail Blazers’ 131-114 win over the Houston Rockets. Lillard shot 22-of-38 from the field and made a franchise-record 13 3-pointers while adding six assists and six rebounds.
He now has five 60-point games in his career, which trails only Kobe Bryant’s six and Wilt Chamberlain’s 61. Sunday’s performance was the eighth-highest scoring game in NBA history, too.
“We’ve got 23, 22 games left after this, and we need to win as many as possible … I feel like I have to do my best to be aggressive and just try to do what I can to get some wins,” Lillard said on the court after the win. “That’s what the case was tonight, I wanted to be in attack mode.”
Lillard entered the locker room at halftime with 41 points after draining eight 3-pointers in the first two quarters. That made him just the second player in history to drop at least 40 points with eight 3-pointers, joining only Bryant, who did so in 2003. It’s also 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, per ESPN.
Lillard got to 50 points by the end of the third quarter, though the Rockets cut the game back 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.
Then after sinking a pair of free throws, Lillard officially broke his career-high mark with a stepback 3-pointer over Jae’Sean Tate, his 12th of the night.
It didn’t end there, either. Lillard kept going, hitting another 3-pointer and getting to 71 points before the night was over. He kept trying to get to Klay Thompson’s 3-point record in a single game, but seemed gassed in the final minute and couldn’t quite get there.
In the end, Lillard finished with 71 points and set a franchise record of 13 3-pointers made in a single game.
Jerami Grant added 13 points for Portland in the win, and Nassir Little put up 11 points and nine rebounds off the bench. They were the only other two Trail Blazers players to hit double figures.
Alperen Sengun led Houston with 17 points and 10 rebounds, and Tate added 17 points of his own in the loss. Tari Eason finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.
This post will be updated with more information shortly.
