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The Lakers’ Luka Doncic era couldn’t have gotten off to a better start.
And the game’s opening play foreshadowed what turned into a dominant 127-105 Lakers’ win over the Warriors Wednesday night at Crypto.com Arena.
As the shot clock was winding down, Doncic drove past Warriors star Draymond Green into the paint before tossing a lob to Lakers marquee offseason acquisition Walker Kessler for an alley-oop dunk to give the Lakers’ an early lead.
That scene – the 7-foot-2 center dunking – played routinely throughout both team’s season opener.
Kessler finished with 10 dunks in his team debut with the Lakers.
His dunk toal was the most by a Laker since Shaquille O’Neal in 2003, according to ESPN, and the most dunk by a player in the league’s play-by-play era (since 1996-97).
Kessler finished with 26 points on 12-of-12 shooting to go with 9 rebounds and 2 blocked shots.
He joined Wilt Chamberlain (34 points on 14-14 shooting on March 11, 1969) as the only players in franchise history to record a perfect shooting night on at least 12 field goal attempts.
Doncic led the Lakers with 28 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists, with the trash talking with Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg in the second quarter igniting the Slovenian superstar.
Austin Reaves added 23 points on 6-of-11 shooting to go with 6 assists and 4 rebounds.
After allowing the Warriors to score 33 points in the opening quarter, with Warriors superstar Steph Curry nearly half of his team’s points (16) in the first, the Lakers tightened up their defense in the second and third, allowing a combined 37 points in the middle quarters/
Curry finished with a team-high 23 points, playing just 21 minutes after the Lakers led by as many as 35 points early in the fourth.