Kevin Love was absolutely, positively in the zone against the Knicks on Friday night, and he wound up with the first game with at least 30 points and at least 30 rebounds the NBA has seen since Moses Malone had 32 points and 38 rebounds against the Seattle Supersonics in 1982.
↵The 31 rebounds were ridiculous enough. . .according to the folks at Basketball Reference, who have stats dating back to the 1986-87 season, there have only been 12 games where a player has gathered 30 rebounds or more in that time span. Five of those 12 games were done by Dennis Rodman, and there are some other pretty big names on that list. . .guys like Charles Barkley, Charles Oakley, Kevin Willis, Rony Seikaly, Michael Cage, and Dikembe Mutumbo. And in only four of those games did the player in question even score 20 points, let alone 30. Willis came the closest, as he had a game against the Dallas Mavericks in 1991 where he had 29 points and 31 rebounds.
↵Love also set the Wolves' team record for rebounds in a quarter, as he pulled down 15 boards in the third stanza alone.
↵But yes. . .nearly three decades have passed since we saw the kind of complete performance that Kevin Love put on for the Target Center crowd on Friday night.
↵Congratulations to Kevin Love on his mammoth accomplishment this evening.
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