The Dallas Mavericks may be without Kyrie Irving for the foreseeable future after the star guard sustained a foot injury, but Luka Doncic ‘s presence alone is enough to calm the nerves of Mavs fans who would want to see nothing more than for the team to continue putting their disappointing finish to last season behind. And on Monday night, it was Doncic who lit up the Memphis Grizzlies in their 120-113 win.
The Slovenian wunderkind led the Mavs in scoring with 35 points, putting the Grizzlies’ defense to the sword with his continued scoring mastery from all three levels. While his shooting percentage overall wasn’t great (9-21 for 42.8 percent), he shot 50 percent from deep on 10 attempts, and in doing so, he notched an epic three-point feat that not even the greatest three-point shooter of all time, Stephen Curry, wasn’t able to.
On Monday night, Luka Doncic made his 1,000th career three-pointer, becoming the second-fastest player in NBA history to do so. The Mavs star was able to join the 1,000 club in just 351 games, trailing Indiana Pacers sharpshooter Buddy Hield, who pulled off this amazing accomplishment in exactly one fewer game than Doncic.
Beyond being the second-fastest player to cross the 1,000 mark in triples, Doncic also became the youngest player in NBA history to do so, at 24 years and 287 days old.
Just to put Luka Doncic’s volume mastery from beyond the arc in greater perspective, Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry was six days away from his 27th birthday when he crossed the 1,000 mark (Curry also needed 396 games to do so.) Of course, Curry was an older rookie than Doncic, and it’s also important to note that the Warriors didn’t exactly hand the keys over to Curry early on in his career the way the Mavs did to the Slovenian star.
Moreover, the three-point revolution didn’t exactly take off until Steve Kerr helmed the Warriors; now, teams hunt open three-balls relentlessly, with Doncic and the Mavs benefitting immensely from this newfound emphasis.
Given how young Luka Doncic is, there’s a realistic chance that he ends up challenging Stephen Curry’s all-time three-pointers record when all is said and done, although at the moment, the Mavs star is still chasing after a moving target with the Warriors star still playing at an elite level.