Luka Doncic makes history yet again as he…
Luka Doncic did something that hadn’t been done in nearly four decades.
After blowing a 16-point fourth-quarter lead against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Dallas Mavericks bounced back 24 hours later as they defeated the Orlando Magic at American Airlines Center on Sunday night, 114-105. It was Dallas’ first back-to-back of the young season.
Although the Mavs are just 3-3 through six games, there are many reasons for optimism going forward. A lot has had to happen for Dallas to lose the three games by an average margin of 3.3 points, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed with time. In the meantime, though, we’ll enjoy watching Luka Doncic go nuclear on a nightly basis until the Mavericks mesh into more of a well-oiled machine.
Doncic finished Sunday night’s game with 44 points on 17-26 shooting overall in 37 minutes. He’s now scored 30+ points in all six games to start this season, which is something that hasn’t been done since Michael Jordan in the 1986-87 season. Jordan averaged 37.1 points per game that season, which started a seven-year stretch of him averaging 30+ points per game. Doncic scored 30 points in the first half alone on Sunday, which was the fourth time he’s accomplished that in his career.
Luka Doncic makes history yet again as he…
Doncic is now averaging a league-leading 36.7 points, 9.5 rebounds, 8.7 assists and 1.7 steals in 36.7 minutes per game. Although it’s taken a lot of things going wrong at once for the Mavs to only have a 3-3 record, Doncic had a chance to win the game at the end of regulation in each of those three losses. The Mavs should be able to string together more wins as they continue to figure out certain lineups and build chemistry with their new big-man additions. When that happens, Doncic could be a lock for MVP if he keeps up his current pace … although he doesn’t necessarily think he has to keep up his current pace for the Mavs to win games.
“I don’t think I need to,” said Doncic. “Some nights, I’m going to get doubled every time and somebody else is going to be open all game. There are different teams and different coverages. I don’t feel like I need to score 30 every night. We have capable players of scoring that too. So, I think it’s not going to be every night because some teams are going to double and some teams don’t.”
