Marshall’s Mind-Blowing Night Was Even More Improbable Than You Think
Nowadays in the NBA it is a three-point shooting league. Players have never chucked up more shots from beyond the arc, including power forwards and centers. The first player to ever make 12+ threes in a single game was back in 2003, when Kobe Bryant shot 12/18 from beyond the arc in a win over Seattle. Since then, a player making 12+ threes in a single game has only happened five times:
Very clearly, one of these performances is not like the others. While Curry, Thompson, and LaVine are all high-volume shooting guards, Marshall is the lone big man on this list. On top of this, when the Splash Brothers and LaVine had their record-breaking nights, their respective teams were averaging over 31 three-point attempts per game. When Donyell Marshall had his magnificent shooting night for Toronto, they were shooting just 20.5 three-pointers a night. The other huge difference between Marshall’s night and the others’… He had his historic game coming off of the bench.
38 Points (12/19 3FGs), 10 Rebounds, and 3 Assists Off of the Bench
On March 13th, 2005, Philadelphia and Toronto faced off and NBA stars like Allen Iverson, Chris Webber, and Chris Bosh all took the court. Chris Bosh lead the Toronto starting unit, scoring 25, adding 10 boards and 5 assists. Morris Peterson also had a near triple-double with 20/8/8 for the Raptors and Allen Iverson dropped 32 points for Philadelphia, but it was Donyell Marshall who made headlines after Toronto’s 128-110 victory. Marshall made his first out of twelve three-pointers at the 4:11 mark in the 1st quarter. He added three more from deep all before even hitting the 2-minute mark left in the first and his miraculous night was off and running.
Marshall shot 4/4 from beyond the arc in the first, 2/5 in the second, 1/1 in the third (playing just 1:10 minutes), and 5/9 from deep in the 4th. He hit 10 of his 12 threes from the corner and all of his made threes came off of assists from his teammates. Donyell Marshall finished with a career-high, 38 points. The former 4th overall pick was never an all-star and averaged just 0.9 made threes per game for his career, but will forever stay etched into the NBA history books as one of the few players to ever make 12+ threes in an NBA game.
