LOS ANGELES \u2014 Luka Doncic scored 49 points and became the fourth player in NBA history to begin a season with back-to-back 40-point performances, leading the Los Angeles Lakers to a 128-110 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Doncic followed\u00a0his 43-point game\u00a0in\u00a0an opening-night loss to Golden State\u00a0with his highest-scoring effort yet in a Lakers jersey, going 14 for 23 with five 3-pointers while adding 11 rebounds and eight assists.<\/p>\n
The Slovenian superstar also made 16 of his 19 free throws, yet he missed his final two field goal attempts and a late free throw to fall just short of his eighth career 50-point game.<\/p>\n
Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain and Anthony Davis have also started NBA seasons with a pair of 40-point games. Doncic was traded to LA for Davis last winter.<\/p>\n
Anthony Edwards scored 31 points and Julius Randle had 26 for Minnesota, which couldn’t slow the Lakers’ offense in a rematch of last season’s\u00a0first-round playoff series\u00a0won in five games by the Wolves.<\/p>\n
Austin Reaves added 25 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds, while Rui Hachimura scored 23 and Deandre Ayton had 15 for the Lakers.<\/p>\n
LeBron James watched from the Lakers\u2019 bench while wearing the Arizona Wildcats jersey of his younger son, Bryce. The top scorer in NBA history is out until at least mid-November with sciatica.<\/p>\n
Doncic mildly injured his groin in the Lakers’ opener, and he hurt his left hand in the opening moments against Minnesota, grabbing at it repeatedly while bent over in pain.<\/p>\n
He still scored 23 points on 8-of-12 shooting with four 3-pointers in the first quarter, matching Kobe Bryant and Kyle Kuzma for the Lakers’ most prolific opening quarter in the past 30 years.<\/p>\n
Doncic had 32 points by halftime, and he added seven quick points early in the fourth quarter as the Lakers pulled away by 20.<\/p>\n
Bronny James made his season debut for the Lakers, playing the final 3:14.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Timberwolves: Host Indiana on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Lakers: At Sacramento on Sunday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 Luka Doncic scored 49 points and became the fourth player in NBA history to begin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[112843,1014,6643,49,3335,48,266,5407,112844,459,24783,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-239413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-app-professional-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-hawaii","15":"tag-lakers","16":"tag-los-angeles-app-region","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-professional-basketball","19":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}