Even beaten superstar LeBron James
Youngest player with 35 points: new record in the NBA
November 30, 2025 – 3:58 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
As an 18-year-old, the basketball prodigy already has to carry the struggling Mavericks.
For the Dallas Mavericks, the current NBA season has so far largely been one to forget – but their prodigy Cooper Flagg continues to write basketball history: In the “Mavs’ 114:110 win against the Los Angeles Clippers, the 18-year-old became the youngest player in the history of the elite league to score 35 points in a regular season game – thereby breaking the record of the great LeBron James.
Rookie Flagg increased his career high of 29 points, which was just over a week old, by six points and carried a Dallas team that was still severely weakened – against the Clippers, Anthony Davis, among others, sat out, and a comeback from Kyrie Irving is not in sight – to only the sixth win in the 21st game of the season. “The coach wants me to play aggressively, even if I make mistakes. And that’s helping me right now, especially since my teammates trust me incredibly,” said Flagg after his Clippers show.
Said coach Jason Kidd praised the teenager effusively. “He’s 18, but he looks like he’s been in the league for a long time. He did everything today,” said Kidd. And Flagg’s experienced teammate Klay Thompson enthused: “Cooper’s possibilities are limitless.”
James was the only 18-year-old to score 30 or more points in an NBA game. On December 14, 2003, he scored 37 points against Boston, when he was five days older than Flagg is now. Two weeks earlier he had broken the 30-point mark for the first time with 33 points against Memphis.
One day before his record game, Flagg met James. The “eternal Lebron,” who will turn 41 at the end of December, won with the Lakers 129:119 against Dallas and, like Flagg, who is around 22 years his junior, scored 13 points. James is retreating more and more into the second tier in LA; like on Friday, Luka Dončić (35 points) takes over the main role for him.
His seemingly grotesque trade from Dallas to the Lakers in exchange for Davis ultimately contributed to Flagg ending up with the “Mavs” – they were so bad afterwards that they were allowed to draw in the draft lottery and got the big Flagg prize.