Walker Kessler took 12 shots in his first game as a Laker and made all 12. The new center finished with 26 points and nine rebounds in 30 minutes as Los Angeles beat the Golden State Warriors 127-105 at Crypto.com Arena on Wednesday, October 21, in their first opener since LeBron James left for Philadelphia.
Only one Laker has ever taken more shots in a game without missing: Wilt Chamberlain, who went 14-for-14 in March 1969. Kessler had not played a competitive game since late October 2025, when a torn labrum in his left shoulder ended his season in Utah.
The three-man box score
The opener was built around three players, and the numbers split neatly between them.
- Luka Dončić: 28 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists, 7-of-18 shooting, 5-of-12 from three, 6 turnovers, 30 minutes, no fourth quarter.
- Austin Reaves: 23 points and 6 assists on 6-of-11 shooting in 32 minutes.
- Walker Kessler: 26 points, 9 rebounds, 12-of-12 from the field, all of it inside the arc.
Together the trio scored 77 of the 127 points, about 61%. Reaves did much of his damage at the line: six field goals, one of them a three, account for 13 points, so 10 came on free throws. Kessler, by contrast, lived on finishes. One recap counted ten dunks for him by the end of the third quarter, many of them lobs from Dončić, starting with an alley-oop on the very first possession.
The team totals tell the same story. The Lakers shot 46 of 81 (57%) to the Warriors’ 38 of 92 (41%), outrebounded them 43-36 and hit 11 threes to Golden State’s 8 on 36 attempts. They scored 103 points through three quarters and led by as many as 35, which is why Dončić could watch the final 12 minutes.
How rare was 12-for-12?
Kessler made 68.1% of his shots across four seasons and 201 games with Utah. Treat each attempt as a separate 68.1% coin flip, and the odds of making 12 in a row work out to 0.681 multiplied by itself 12 times, or roughly 1%: about one game in 100. Lob dunks are easier than an average Kessler attempt, so the real odds were better than that, but a perfect night at this volume is still an outlier, not a baseline.
The roster bet behind it
Kessler is a Laker because Los Angeles paid to get him. In July the team completed a sign-and-trade with Utah: a four-year, $130 million contract for the 25-year-old, with two first-round picks and two first-round pick swaps going to the Jazz. The move was aimed squarely at giving Dončić a rim-running center, and night one was the best-case version of that plan.
The bench held up too. Jake LaRavia and Quentin Grimes scored 10 points each, though LaRavia limped off in the fourth quarter. Two newcomers sat out: guard Collin Sexton with a calf problem and rookie Cameron Carr with an oblique injury.
Contender, or one game?
Supporters see a team that has finally matched Dončić with a center who catches everything and a second creator in Reaves who can carry stretches alone. The scoring distribution, the 57% shooting and a 22-point margin over Stephen Curry’s team all point the same way.
Skeptics have their own numbers. One week earlier, on October 13 in Las Vegas, these same Warriors erased a 20-point deficit and beat the Lakers 101-89 in a preseason game, helped by Los Angeles giving the ball away 29 times. Dončić sat that one out and Kessler played only 16 minutes, but the turnover problem did not fully disappear on Wednesday: the Lakers still committed 18, six of them by Dončić. Golden State was also short-handed, missing Jimmy Butler, Kristaps Porziņģis, Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski.
The early sample is one game out of 82. The next test comes quickly: the Lakers host the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday, October 23, then visit Golden State on October 30.
Further reading
Image: Troutfarm27, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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