Luka Doncic has been the engine keeping the Los Angeles Lakers running all season long. Since landing in Los Angeles from Dallas last February, he’s turned a middling roster into a team that is actually in the title conversation. That alone tells you what kind of season he is having.
Doncic leads the NBA in scoring and drops massive performances just about every night out. Yet somehow, his name is not in the top three of most MVP discussions. A big reason is where the Lakers sit right now. They’re sixth in the Western Conference and still trying to claw their way out of Play-In range.
MVP voters tend to look at wins and team success, not just jaw-dropping individual stats. However, former WNBA power forward Candace Parker thinks there’s another layer to this whole thing.
She appeared on ‘Cousins with Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady’ recently and brought up something that felt spot-on. Parker believes Doncic might be running into the same problem Kobe Bryant dealt with years ago, being so consistently great that people eventually just take it for granted.
“I’m simply saying, don’t Kobe, Luka. Like, don’t just get bored with greatness. Luka Doncic is a beast, and I feel like to some extent, we overlooked greatness, because you see it for an extended period of time. I think we did that a little bit with you [Tracy McGrady], honestly.”
“I think that overlooking greatness means, like, if you win MVP, it’s this year. Right? What Luka is doing, we cannot get bored with that.”
Tracy McGrady was making his case for Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown as an MVP candidate during the segment, but Parker’s argument for Doncic carried real weight. The 26-year-old Slovenian has been everything the Lakers hoped for and more since the blockbuster deal went down. He’s raised the ceiling for everyone around him, which matters even more when you consider LeBron James is in year 23 and Austin Reaves is turning into a legitimate shooter.
Through 42 games this season, Doncic is averaging 32.8 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 8.6 assists per game while shooting 47.3% from the field and 34.5% from beyond the arc. His defense gets picked apart plenty, but what he’s doing on the offensive end more than balances that out. Those are MVP-caliber numbers no matter how one looks at it.
The Kobe Bryant comparison Parker made is not far-fetched at all. After Shaquille O’Neal left town, Bryant was carrying those Lakers teams on his back before Pau Gasol arrived. He dragged them into playoff contention year after year through sheer force of will, dropping scoring performances that belonged in the history books. Not that MVPs meant a great deal to Kobe.
But MVP voters kept looking elsewhere, swayed by team records and whatever narrative was hot at the time. Bryant led the league in scoring in both 2006 and 2007, averaging 35.4 and 31.6 points per game in those seasons. Steve Nash took home the MVP in 2006, and then Dirk Nowitzki won it in 2007 after the Dallas Mavericks posted 67 wins.
For a career built on dominance and relentless intensity, Bryant finished with just one MVP award in 2008. That still feels wrong to a lot of people, and Parker clearly sees Doncic heading down that same road if voters are not careful.
