Forty a night stopped being a hot streak a while ago. It’s a personality now, and Luka Doncic made it official Friday with a season-high 53 that dragged the Lakers past the Trail Blazers 124-118.
That was his fourth straight 40-point game, which puts him alongside Elgin Baylor, Kobe Bryant and George Mikan as the only Lakers ever to do it. It is the first week of November.
The scoring line is the headline. The halftime buzzer is the clip.
Luka launched a 62-foot heave at the first-half horn, it went in, and ESPN says it helped spark the comeback. Bruce Springsteen was in the building for it, which is the kind of detail you can’t write.
https://x.com/NBA/status/2118924155596742750
A shot from there should be a joke. A guy tosses one up so he can get to the locker room, the crowd groans, everybody moves on. Instead it became the swing. Most players get one heave like that in a career. Luka seems to have a standing reservation.
JJ Redick tried to put it into words afterward. “Luka can do some things that maybe a handful, if not no one, can do in basketball,” the Lakers coach said. Blazers coach Micah Nori went further before tip and called Doncic “the MVP right now. Hands down.” That is the other team’s coach, handing over a trophy in November, which tells you what it felt like from the opposite bench.
https://x.com/NBA/status/2118948663179534655
Now the part that slows the hype train down a little. Luka is averaging 40.1 points per game, a career high, and ESPN notes that no player has averaged 40 for a full season since Wilt Chamberlain did it in 1962-63. Michael Jordan averaged 37.1 in 1986-87, and Kobe’s 35.4 sits on the same list. So Luka is on pace for something that hasn’t happened in more than sixty years, and “on pace” is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence.
He knows it, too. “It’s obviously a long season,” Doncic said. “We’re 10 games in. We’ve got 72 left. As long as we’re winning, I’m good.” Seventy-two games is a long time to keep dragging a team past opponents, and this was his sixth 40-point game of the season, plus a second 50-point night. Defenses will adjust, and February will not look like November.
I still wouldn’t bet against him for the next week. Earlier this month he was busy getting a fan ejected in the middle of one of these 40-point games, and the argument over where all this puts him among the great scorers is going to get louder before it gets quieter. He added 5 rebounds and 5 assists on Friday, by the way, just to round out the line.
Six 40-point games in ten tries means the 38-point night is the one that needs an explanation.
