Luka Doncic was asked Tuesday about whether he or Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo had the better opportunity of setting a EuroBasket scoring record.
Doncic quickly picked Antetokounmpo.
A day later, he might have proved himself wrong.
Doncic scored 47 points — the second most by anyone in the history of the European championships — and led Slovenia past France 88-82 on Wednesday for the top seed out of Group B going into this weekend’s start of the knockout round.
“Luka, obviously, is a fantastic player,” said France center Rudy Gobert, one of the world’s top defenders.
Doncic had 27 of Slovenia’s first 36 points, made 15 of 23 shots from the field and had team highs of seven rebounds and five assists.
Eddy Terrace had 63 points for Belgium versus Albania in 1957.
That’s the only EuroBasket performance in which someone had more points than Doncic did Wednesday; the previous second-best effort was 46 by Greece’s Nikos Galis versus Sweden in 1983.
The most in this year’s EuroBasket, entering Wednesday, was Antetokounmpo scoring 41 on Ukraine. With Antetokounmpo and Doncic both scoring over 40 points in a game, it marks the first time since 1987 that multiple players had 40-plus-point games in the same EuroBasket tournament.
Goran Dragic broke a tie with a layup with 1:20 left that put Slovenia (4-1) ahead for good. It was a measure of payback for Slovenia, which lost to France in the Olympic semifinals at the Tokyo Games last summer.
“Luka had a great night,” Slovenia coach Aleksander Sekulic said. “He spoils us so much. We think this is normal. This is not normal.”
Dragic had 14 for Slovenia. Gobert had 19 for France (3-2), which got 15 from Evan Fournier, 13 from Amath M’Baye, 11 from Elie Okobo and a 10-point, 10-rebound effort from Thomas Heurtel.
Wednesday started the final round of group play. There are four groups with six teams in each, and the top four clubs in each group — 16 teams in all — advance to Berlin for the knockout phase, which starts Saturday.
