16 years ago today: Kevin Love’s 31 points and 31 rebounds give the NBA its first 30-30 game since Moses Malone

Sixteen years ago today, on Friday, November 12, 2010, Kevin Love had 31 points and 31 rebounds for the Minnesota Timberwolves in a 112-103 win over the New York Knicks at Target Center. Nobody in the NBA had put up 30 points and 30 rebounds in the same game since Moses Malone in February 1982.

Love was 22, in his third season, and still fighting for minutes. By the end of the night, the 15,232 fans in Minneapolis had seen one of the strangest stat lines of the modern era.

Six points at halftime

The first half gave no hint of what was coming. New York led 65-51 at the break, and Love had only 6 points and 9 rebounds on 2-of-8 shooting. Through the first nine games of the season he had averaged about 28 minutes a night under Kurt Rambis, and there was open talk about whether the two were on the same page.

Then the third quarter started. Love grabbed 15 rebounds in that quarter alone, 5 of them on the offensive glass, and Minnesota cut into the lead. In the fourth he scored 14 points on 6-of-10 shooting as the Wolves won the quarter 32-16 and pulled away. His second half: 25 points and 22 rebounds in less than 23 minutes.

He reached 31 rebounds with a few minutes still left, and then hit a 3-pointer late in the fourth quarter to push Minnesota’s lead to 111-99 and bring his scoring to 31 as well. It was his only 3 of the night in four tries.

• Date: Friday, November 12, 2010, Target Center, Minneapolis
• Final: Timberwolves 112, Knicks 103
• Kevin Love: 31 points, 31 rebounds (12 offensive, 19 defensive), 5 assists in 40:39; 11 of 26 from the field, 8 of 10 at the line
• By half: 6 points and 9 rebounds before the break, 25 and 22 after it
• Other Wolves: Michael Beasley 35 points on 16-of-29 shooting, Wesley Johnson 15, Corey Brewer 12
• Knicks leaders: Danilo Gallinari 25, Raymond Felton 22 and 8 assists, Wilson Chandler 17, Landry Fields 16 and 10 rebounds

The numbers behind 31 and 31

The 31 rebounds were a Timberwolves record, breaking the mark Al Jefferson had set earlier that same year, on January 13, 2010. They were also the most by any NBA player since Charles Barkley grabbed 33 for Houston on November 2, 1996. When Jusuf Nurkic grabbed 31 for Phoenix on March 3, 2024, it was billed as the most by anyone since Love’s night.

The 30-30 was even rarer. Malone’s 38 points and 32 rebounds for Houston against Seattle on February 11, 1982, had been the last one, and before that the club was almost all 1960s and 1970s big men: Wilt Chamberlain many times over, Willis Reed, Nate Thurmond, Elvin Hayes, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Parish. After Love, the next 30-30 did not come for more than seven years, when Dwight Howard had 32 points and 30 rebounds for Charlotte in Brooklyn on March 21, 2018.

“It seemed like no matter what anybody did I was going to go and get those rebounds. I don’t know what to tell you,” Love said after the game. “I impressed myself.” Years later, he gave some of the credit to the opponent, pointing out on social media that the game came against a fast-paced Mike D’Antoni Knicks team that produced lots of extra shots and misses.

On this day in 2010, Kevin Love became the 20th player in NBA history with a 30-30 game, recording 31 points and 31 rebounds against NYK! #NBAVault pic.twitter.com/i7vc9kfBcG

— NBA History (@NBAHistory) November 12, 2020

A season of double-doubles

The game changed how Love was used and how he was seen. Ten days later, on November 22, he started a run of 53 straight double-doubles that lasted until March 13, 2011, when Golden State held him to 6 points. It was the longest such streak since the ABA-NBA merger, passing Moses Malone’s 51, and second only to Elvin Hayes’s 55 in 1973-74.

Love finished the season at 20.2 points and a league-leading 15.2 rebounds, the first player to average 20 and 15 since Malone in 1982-83. He won Most Improved Player, and he was named to his first All-Star team as an injury replacement for Yao Ming. He also made 41.7 percent of his 3-pointers, a sign of the stretch-four game that would define the rest of his career.

None of it helped Minnesota much. The win over New York moved the Wolves to 3-7, and they finished 17-65, the worst record in the league. Love went on to make three All-Star teams in Minnesota before a 2014 trade sent him to Cleveland, where he won the 2016 championship alongside LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. He later played for Miami and spent last season with Utah.

Why it still stands out

Big rebounding nights have not disappeared, but the modern game spreads the floor and spreads the boards. Players in the 1960s regularly topped 30 rebounds because teams took far more shots and missed far more of them. Love did it in an era of 3-pointers and switching defenses, and he did it while shooting from outside himself.

Sixteen years later, the 31 rebounds still sit atop the Timberwolves record book. For one half against the Knicks, a player who was still fighting for minutes looked like the best rebounder in the world, and over the next five months he proved it.