Eight games into the season, Luka Dončić looks like the best basketball player alive, and he still doesn't deserve the MVP. Both are true, and the gap between them explains his whole history with this award.
Start with what he did to Miami on Monday night. 42 points, 13 assists, seven rebounds, two steals, 14-of-24 from the floor with six threes and only two turnovers, in a 138-117 Lakers win that moved them to 6-2. Austin Reaves chipped in 27. Giannis Antetokounmpo watched the whole thing and called him "one of the best scorers to play this game." It was Dončić's fourth 40-point game in his last five, and it dragged his league-leading scoring average up near 39 a night as of that game. Over that five-game stretch he's at 43.4 points, 8.4 rebounds and 8.6 assists, shooting better than 53% from the field and better than 44% from three. Miami tried to blitz him off ball screens and got cooked for it: the Lakers scored on six of the seven possessions where he drew a double team.
The people shouting MVP right now have a point, they're just early. You don't win an 82-game award on a five-game heater, no matter how pretty it is, and the crowd that wants it settled this week is selling the result before the season has finished writing it. The sturdiest case against him is about team success: voters weigh wins, and brilliant scoring on a .500 team has never been the fast lane to this trophy. The Lakers are 6-2, a modest start, and a lot can rot between now and April.
Rating
RatingWhat has kept Dončić from this award has never been his talent. Last season he led the entire NBA in scoring at 33.5 a game and didn't receive a single first-place vote, finishing a distant fourth behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić and Victor Wembanyama. He played 64 games and needed a CBA exception, granted under the "extraordinary circumstances" clause, just to qualify for awards at all. A hamstring injury gutted the end of his run, and JJ Redick said he was disappointed Dončić wasn't even named a finalist. Nobody snubbed a healthy, 82-game Luka, because there wasn't one to vote for.
That's the backdrop for Draymond Green's line that's been bouncing around: "Luka will never win an MVP in the NBA. This is the last possible year he can win it." The doom part is podcast provocation. The clock underneath it is real: the window argument only works because of the games Dončić has missed.
RTGDončić owns the outcome this time. Gilgeous-Alexander, the two-time reigning MVP, will fight to keep the trophy himself. Wembanyama is going to haunt this race for the next decade. The voters nearly bent over backwards to keep Dončić eligible last spring, and they clearly respect the game he plays. The one variable that decides it is whether Luka can stay on the court for 70-plus games while looking like this. Do that, and he wins the trophy.
Right now, today, he's the front-runner and the best offensive player in the world. He just hasn't earned the hardware yet. That's been the case his entire career with this award. Ask me again in April. The answer won't depend on Shai, or Wemby, or a single ballot. It'll depend on Luka Dončić simply being in the building.
