Everyone was stunned. The last time Link dropped 61 points on the Lakers, it had already been an utterly insane record.
But today? Link had scored 61 points in just three quarters!
He scored 21 in the first quarter and 18 in the second. Nearly everyone thought Link would inevitably collapse in the second half, while Frank Vogel had confidently believed the Lakers would take control after halftime.
He did not believe such a low-probability event would happen to him.
Yet in the third quarter, Link instead put up his highest-scoring quarter of the game: 22 points!
Shock, despair, fear, disbelief... Link's performance today was a devastating blow to the hearts of everyone present.
Some longtime Lakers fans, however, felt pleasantly surprised and deeply moved, because Link had nearly recreated the legend Kobe had left behind!
Even Kobe himself was stunned. He knew exactly how much stamina it took to produce a performance like this.
If Kobe had faced the Raptors on the second night of a back-to-back, he believed there was absolutely no way he could have scored 81 points.
Link's circumstances today were far worse than Kobe's had been against the Raptors!
Yet Link was still charging toward that record. Twenty points—he was only twenty points away.
Come to think of it, scoring 20 points in an entire game was no easy task, let alone in a single quarter.
Going from 61 points to 80 was still incredibly difficult.
But after the way Link had played today, who could possibly tell him it would be difficult?
An 80-point record and a 33-game winning streak—two historic records were right in front of him. Would you let them slip away so easily?
No wonder Mike Breen had just shouted that the Lakers were finished. Link now had no reason whatsoever