At just 25 years old, Luka Doncic is having a historically great season. His 34.4 points per game is second to Joel Embiid’s 35.3, but Doncic will in all likelihood finish as the league’s scoring champion due to the 58 minimum games played requirement for that award. He’s also nearly averaging a triple-double, with 9.7 assists and 8.8 rebounds per game.
Doncic is the first player in NBA history to ever hit those 34/10/9 averages in a season, per Stathead. Those averages are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the crazy accomplishments that he’s reached this year. And yet, he’s only +450 (18 percent implied odds) to win MVP via BetMGM, currently trailing Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Here’s why he’s much more deserving than those odds reflect for the award.
MORE: Luka Doncic’s step-back has become unstoppable
Why Luka Doncic should be MVP
Luka Doncic has had the best games of the NBA season
Luka has put on some truly special performances this season.
His 73-point masterpiece against the Hawks was the best game of the year by Basketball-Reference’s Game Score, which is a metric created by The Athletic’s John Hollinger to give a rough measure of a player’s productivity for a single game.
It doesn’t take fancy math to come to the conclusion that 73 points on 33 shots, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists in a win was a performance unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Those numbers had never been matched before.
If that weren’t enough, Doncic had a 50-point, 15-assist, 4-steal, 3-block game on Christmas against the Suns. You guessed it — that box score was the first of its kind.
There have been five games this year where a player has put up a game score of 50 or higher. Those two Doncic games are nos. 1 and 4 on the list. There have been other scoring binges this season, but he has been the best of the best.
Most importantly, both of those jaw-dropping outputs came in wins where the Mavericks needed every one of Doncic’s baskets. He’s not stat-padding to get to these figures. They’re coming naturally in the flow of critical wins in a tight Western Conference race.
Luka Doncic is doing the most with the least
The Mavs are nine games above .500 but in an extremely tight battle for spots 5-10 in the Western Conference. They would easily be completely out of the playoff picture if they didn’t have Luka on the roster.
Kyrie Irving has fit in nicely with the team, but he’s missed 32 games. Their big free agent acquisition, Grant Williams, was so ineffective that he was traded four months into a four-year deal. The Mavs haven’t had any consistency this year, adding players on the fly and being forced into trying all sorts of weird combinations. None of their lineups have topped 100 minutes all season.
Through it all, Doncic keeps his team winning. They’ve started a rookie, Dereck Lively II, and Derrick Jones Jr., a veteran who was signed for the minimum at the very end of free agency because no one else was interested. Doncic has revitalized Jones’ career and made Lively look like one of the steals of the draft.
The players generally considered in front of Doncic in the MVP race have far better rosters. Nikola Jokic is on a championship team. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren and one of the deeper rosters in the league. Giannis has Damian Lillard.
Doncic is carrying the Mavs with castoffs, young unproven players, and half a season of Kyrie. When it comes to value, Doncic is the only thing separating the Mavericks from the draft lottery.
Luka Doncic has shored up his biggest weaknesses
Doncic has gotten close to winning the MVP a couple of times. He’s been in the top eight in MVP voting in each of the last four years, with his best finishing coming in at fourth place in his sophomore season.
The arguments preventing Doncic from getting to the top of the vote in previous years have generally been twofold — one, he doesn’t try on defense and two, he doesn’t grade out as elite in advanced stats.
Doncic is never going to be a defensive stopper. But he has had more good moments of solid defense this year. He repeatedly stopped Karl-Anthony Towns in the closing minutes of a close win against the Timberwolves this year, for example, and has generally been good in the post. The Mavericks have tried to keep him lower on the floor to limit his problems with footspeed, and it’s helped him look better.
Doncic has also graded out well in the advanced stats this year. His +7.6 Estimated Plus-Minus is the highest of his career and third-highest in the league. He’s also no. 5 in RAPTOR, no. 3 in LEBRON, and no. 3 in Box Plus-Minus.
That increase in advanced stats is being driven in large part by Luka’s improvement in shooting. He’s always taken tough 3’s, but he’s making them at a much higher clip now. His 38 percent from 3 is by far a career-high for him and well above the 33.8 percent career average he had before the season started.
If advanced stats aren’t your thing, then look at the basic ones. He is either right there or better than all of the other MVP candidates.
| Player | Points | Rebounds | Assists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luka Doncic | 34.4 | 8.8 | 9.7 |
| Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | 31.2 | 5.6 | 6.5 |
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 30.6 | 11.2 | 6.3 |
| Jayson Tatum | 27.0 | 8.5 | 4.9 |
| Nikola Jokic | 25.8 | 12.3 | 9.3 |
The one thing that those other players have over Doncic is that they are on better teams. How much should that be held against him, and what else does he have to do at this point?
Jokic is probably going to win the award, and he would be a very deserving choice. But Doncic is doing stuff that has never been done before. There’s a very easy case to be made that he’s the best player in the league. Let’s not sleep on how special of a season this has been for him.
MORE: How Shai Gilgeous-Alexander can win MVP over Nikola Jokic
