Indiana Pacers and former NC State forward T.J. Warren delivered the first 50-point performance in the NBA restart Saturday in a 127-121 win over the Philadelphia 76ers.
Warren scored a career-high 53 points shooting 20-for-29 from the field including 9-for-12 on three-point attempts. The six-year pro, whose previous record was 40 points in an NBA game, rounded out his explosive stat line with four rebounds, three assists and two blocked shots. He also finished the night with a +/- of +16.
"T.J. Warren been scoring his whole life. Since his AAU days to NC State," Pacers guard Victor Oladipo told ESPN. "He's been a scorer since as long as I've known him and I've known him for a long time.
"He was born to get buckets, so it's no surprise to any of us that he was able to do what he did tonight."
Nicknamed "Tony Buckets" for a reason, Warren's historic night included a pair of two clutch three-pointers in the final 64 seconds to seal the Indiana victory.
The former Wolfpack stand out made his presence known in the opening minutes when he sank his first seven shots from the field and scored 19 points in the first quarter. He followed it up with another 19 points in the fourth quarter which helped the Pacers advance to 40-26 on the season, good for fifth in the Eastern Conference.
Warren's 53-point performance Sunday now places third all-time in Pacers franchise history and establishes a new NBA record for points in a single game in August.
"I play a lot of basketball. When I'm at home with my friends, when I'm playing pickup games, anywhere. I'm just born to be a hooper, so just me coming out here, just playing the way I play and playing my game, being aggressive," Warren told ESPN. "It doesn't matter the environment, you've just got to come with it every game. Every game I feel anxious and nervous at the same time, but it's full of excitement. Tonight was one of those special nights."
The jaw-dropping scoring night does not come as a surprise to Wolfpack fans, who witnessed the 6-foot-8 walking bucket deliver similar freaky performances during his three-year career in Raleigh. In 2014, Warren won ACC Player of the Year, the first NC State player to win the award since Julius Hodge in 2003-04 and the last to do so since.
If the "hot hand" is a real phenomenon, Warren experienced it Saturday night. In many ways, the night had a similar feel to the 2014 battle in PNC Arena between Warren and UNC's Marcus Paige in a historic shoot-out in the rivalry.
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