Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving was like a ticking time bomb during his team’s game against the Portland Trailblazers on Wednesday, January 28.
Without LeBron James in the game due to a sprained right wrist, Kyrie Irving got an added pressure to score so he was firing blanks all over the floor in the first 10 minutes of the contest. But when the bomb detonated, Kyrie Irving was hitting in all cylinders beginning in the 1:39 mark of the opening canto.
Referring to Irving as being on fire during the game was an understatement. He was an explosion all by himself scattering 55 markers en route to his best scoring output in his four-year NBA career and in the process leading the Cavaliers to a 99-94 win over the Blazers.
A bad start for a good game
At the onset of the game, Irving was a poor sight on the court, missing his first seven shots on the floor and contributing a solitary point to his team’s cause by virtue of a technical free throw, notes Yahoo! Sports.
But starting at the 1:39 mark of the first quarter, Irving started going. In that span of 99 seconds, he scored 11 points to end the first quarter.
Kyrie Irving made 11 three pointers to finish the night, including the tie-breaking 3-point shot less than 10 seconds to go and from 25 feet away over the outstretch arms of Nicolas Batum, which literally broke the back of the Blazers.
With the score at 97-94, and 6.4 seconds remaining, Blazers point guard Damian Lillard fired a corner 3-point shot in an attempt to tie the game but the shot missed and it went into the hands of the NBA’s No. 1 draft pick of 2011. He was fouled thereafter.
Irving made points No. 54 and 55 via the free throw line resulting to the final score of the contest.
Highest scoring output in the NBA this season
Irving’s 55 points on Wednesday is also the highest scoring output of any player in the NBA this season. The Cleveland Cavaliers guard erased the record of Mo Williams of the Los Angeles Clippers and Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors who both scored 52 points in a game earlier in January.
It was also Irving’s career-best, which overshadowed his highest NBA scoring mark of 44 points he made against the Charlotte Bobcats in April 2014.
By scoring 55 points, Irving also tied LeBron James for the second most number of points scored by a Cleveland Cavaliers player in a game. The record is also being held by LeBron James with Cleveland at 56 points, which he made on March 20, 2005 against the Toronto Raptors.
But Irving’s scoring explosion happened at the Cleveland home floor whereas LeBron James two scoring records happened on the road so Irving’s 55-point output is the highest ever made in the Q arena, eclipsing Allen Iverson’s 54 points which he dropped against the Cavaliers on January 2001.