Maybe the LA Lakers just needed some time to figure things out, because after two years of soul searching, they are finally looking like real title contenders. They’ve now won eight straight games, and it’s not like the schedule has been a cakewalk, as they’ve beaten the Knicks, Wolves and Nuggets at home and the Rockets twice and the Heat on the road and their star man Luka Doncic has been at the heart of it all.
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Doncic has had an outstanding season, but he’s been especially scorching hot lately. He’s led the Lakers in scoring in 16 of his past 17 games, and last night’s 60-point detonation gave him an even 100 in his last two games.
Courtesy of Doncic, what once looked like a two-horse race between the Thunder and Spurs in the West now looks much more wide open, with the Lakers solidifying their hold on the 3-seed. Consequently, NBA analyst Stephen A. Smith is happy to put his stock behind the big Slovenian as this season’s MVP.
On First Take this morning, Smith gave the Lakers and Luka some long-overdue respect. “I don’t think we have a choice,” he said when asked if Luka should get MVP consideration.
“I think this dude is electrifying. He’s a scoring sensation. He’s a superstar in this league … I’m ashamed that I hadn’t brought up Luka for league MVP consideration sooner than this morning. That ends now. That gets corrected right now,” he sternly noted.
There’s really no way to keep Luka off the top three, minimum, of MVP ballots at this point, and definitely no way to justify not making him a First Team All-NBA player for the sixth time in his career.
He’s leading the league with 33.4 points per game, is second in the NBA in 3-pointers made, but also making everyone around him better by dishing out 8.4 assists per game, a number that trails only Nikola Jokic and Cade Cunningham.
Brian Windhorst added to Stephen A.’s point by praising the Lakers for winning last night when they had every reason to make excuses and end their streak.
“They didn’t land until 4 a.m., didn’t get to the hotel ’til 5 a.m.,” he said. “It’s a preposterous back-to-back, because not only is it West to East so you lose the hour, but because it was the second game on national television, it started at 8:30.”
Luka, LeBron James and Austin Reaves were all marked as questionable coming into the game, but they all played, and fought back from an early 15-point deficit in a performance that Windy called “awe-inspiring.” He also made sure to mention how much the team, and Luka individually, have improved defensively, which has long been one of their biggest deficiencies.
The Lakers have been bounced in the first round of the playoffs each of the last two years. There are so many good teams in the West that it won’t be easy to make a run this year, either, but with the way they’re playing and the level Luka is operating at, they’re going to be a much tougher out this time around.
