On March 19, Los Angeles Lakers All-NBA and All-Star guard Luka Doncic scored 60 points in a 134-126 win in Miami. The Lakers announced that Doncic was the first Laker to bucket 60 since the late Kobe Bryant scored 60 in his final NBA game on April 13, 2016.
On Friday night, Doncic, 27, matched Bryant again.
Doncic posted 41 points, eight rebounds, three assists, three steals, and one block in the Lakers’ 116-99 win over the visiting Brooklyn Nets. The three steals brought Doncic’s season total to 102.
The Lakers posted that Doncic is “the first Laker since Kobe in 2012-13” and added that Doncic is the only player in the NBA this season averaging over 30 points per game to have 100-plus total steals on the year.
On March 23 against the Detroit Pistons, Doncic became the “fastest Laker to reach 2,000 points in a season since Kobe Bryant in 2005-06,” per ESPN Insights.
According to StatMuse, Doncic is now the first Laker in franchise history to score at least 2,000 total points, record at least 500 assists, and commit at least 100 steals in a single season. After Friday’s game, Doncic’s totals stand at 2,089 points, 511 assists, and 102 steals.
“The guy who does the MVP ladder just saw this and dropped Luka to 8th,” posted Jason Gallagher, an Emmy-winning director who works on Mind The Game.
Gallagher also pulled on his experience rooting for Doncic on the Dallas Mavericks - Doncic was traded to Los Angeles in February 2025 - to comfort frustrated Lakers fans: “It’s not a Laker thing. It’s a Luka thing (speaking as a Dallas person who has been having this argument for years).”
Other basketball fans on X (formerly Twitter) posted about how Doncic is “the actual MVP.” Last week, Laker legend Magic Johnson posted, “Luka has to be one of the top 2 or 3 players being considered in the MVP race.”
Doncic currently has the third-best odds for 2026 NBA MVP behind reigning MVP Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and San Antonio Spurs supernova big man Victor Wembanyama (via DraftKings).
Doncic is on pace to win the scoring title for the second time in his NBA career, as he’s averaging 33.7 points per game with eight games left in the regular season for the 48-26 Lakers.
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