The incredible NBA feat only achieved by Luka Doncic and Wilt Chamberlain

Luka Doncic lit up the American Airlines Center on Wednesday night, as he has done so many times before. This time, however, he was wearing the LA Lakers vest and putting former team Dallas Mavericks to the sword with a virtuoso 45-point performance.

It was the first time that Doncic had returned to Dallas, little over two months since his shock trade. Doncic has hit the ground running in Los Angeles and made a little piece of history in Wednesday’s win.

Doncic became just the second player in NBA history to score 45 points while playing for and against the same team in a single season. In December he put up 45 for the Mavericks against the Golden State Warriors. He was traded in February and went on to haunt the Mavericks on his return.

Speaking after the game, Lakers head coach J. J. Reddick praised Doncic’s mentality and ability to perform to that level on an emotional return: “To have the emotional resolve to then go put on that kind of performance, it’s superhuman and I think all his teammates know that too because I think all his teammates can empathize with what he just went through for the last couple of months.”

“Maybe some anticipation, maybe some dread but certainly a ton of emotions about tonight, and then he went and did that. It’s big time and he led us...our guys certainly had Luka’s back and he had his teammates’ back for sure.”

The only other player to have managed that feat is the great Wilt Chamberlain, a four-time NBA Most Valuable Player and holder of an astonishing 72 league records. Playing for the San Francisco State Warriors in the 1964/65 season Chamberlain scored 63 points against the Philadelphia 76ers, before being traded to the 76ers midway through the season and subsequently putting up 48 points in a win over the Cincinnati Royals in March.

That season Chamberlain scored 45 or more in 12 of his 38 games for the Warriors, averaging 36.9 points per game across the entire season. Of the seven most prolific scoring seasons in NBA history, Chamberlain is responsible for five of them. His crowning glory, the 1961/62 season with the Philadelphia Warriors, saw him average an astonishing 50.4 points per game.

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