© Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
Final Look: Dallas Mavs Star Luka Doncic's Historic Season, Strong Case for NBA MVP
Luka Doncic accomplished things no player has ever accomplished in NBA history during his sixth season with the Dallas Mavericks, and he has a rock-solid case to win his first MVP award.
The Dallas Mavericks finish up their 2023-24 regular season on Sunday against the Oklahoma City Thunder, but MVP candidate Luka Doncic's year is already in the books after head coach Jason Kidd announced that he and Kyrie Irving will miss that final game to get some well-deserved rest for the playoffs.
In his sixth season, Doncic played in 70 games and averaged a league-leading and career-high 33.9 points, 9.2 rebounds and 9.8 asssists – a stat line never before achieved in a single season in NBA history. Doncic shot 48.7 percent from the field, a career-high 38.2 percent from 3-point range and another career-high 78.6 percent from the free-throw line.
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As good as Doncic's incredible offensive numbers were, though, it was his improvement on the defensive end of the floor that helped push the Mavs and his individual game to the next level. Doncic led the Mavs with 99 steals (1.4 per game), and he also 38 blocks (0.5 per game). Both of those marks were career-highs, and they still don't tell the whole story of how much his heightened effort on that end of the floor helped his team. Doncic finished the season tied for No. 10 in the league with 2.6 deflections per game.
The regular season is coming to a close, but the MVP conversation is still heating up, as voters can't officially cast their ballots until all 82 games are in the books. A handful of national media members will have you believe that Denver Nuggets' Nikola Jokic is the runaway MVP this year, but that shouldn't be the case. As a two-time MVP winner and champion, Jokic has been stellar this season and is worthy of being in a tight race with Doncic for MVP. However, to say that Jokic should beat Doncic in a landslide would be ignoring and disrespecting Doncic's historic season – again, one that has never been seen before.
Back in early February, when Doncic was still putting up monster numbers while the Mavs were 26-23, the argument from many media members was that his team wasn't winning enough games to warrant real MVP consideration. Now, Doncic has maintained his high-level production while the Mavs reached 50 wins, won the Southwest Division and secured a top-five seed in a brutal Western Conference – all while navigating through several roster injuries and integrating two new starting players in Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington into their lineups after the trade deadline.
As far as in-season awards go, Doncic joined Boston Celtics' Jayson Tatum as the only players to win two Player of the Month awards, and Doncic was the only player to win them in back-to-back months. Doncic also led the league in 35-point games (32), 40-point games (13), 30-point triple-doubles (16), 35-point triple-doubles (11) and 40-point triple-doubles (2).
What else does Doncic have to do aside from hoping his team stays healthy enough to win six more games to keep up with the Nuggets and Thunder? At what point does the national media stop moving the goalposts? Well ... at least some some are starting to see the light.
“His stats speak for themselves," Kyrie Irving said of his co-star's MVP case. "He’s first in a lot of different categories. He’s held this team up when I wasn’t able to be in the lineup and I was injured. There are a lot of factors that I factor to his MVP case, and me as a brother of his, I have the utmost love and support to give him. I want to see him win MVP. ... If it’s not going to be this year, it’s going to be in the near future.
“[Luka] challenged his teammates, challenged me, and he did it in his own way. I think that’s the true sign of MVP – coming into the season and really initiating himself into that leadership role, doing it on both ends of the court."
If most media members made up their minds about who was going to win MVP back in February, then Jokic will likely win his third MVP in four seasons, which would tie him with Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Moses Malone for fourth all-time. However, if voters take the entire season into account, comparing Doncic's unbelievable numbers to Jokic's while also factoring in the obstacles Doncic had to navigate the Mavs through ... maybe, just maybe, he can win the MVP award for the first time in his career.
Even if Doncic gets spurned by MVP voters, that could still end up being a good thing for the Mavs, who are preparing to take on the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the playoffs for the third time in five years. After missing the postseason entirely last year, it's not like Doncic, who is already known for being a playoffs riser, needs any extra motivation to play his best basketball, but if MVP voters want to give him some extra ammo, he'll definitely take it.
Doncic's teammates and coaches have been wearing "Pravi MVP" shirts over the last few games in support of his campaign, which roughly translates to "Real MVP." There is no better way for Doncic to prove that he is the "Real MVP" than by making a strong playoff run and ultimately winning the award that matters most – Finals MVP. We should find out the winner of the regular-season MVP award sometime toward the end of the first round or beginning of the second round of the playoffs, which begin on April 20.
