Luka Doncic Deserves the MVP, and the NBA Should Let Him Have It
Luka Doncic Deserves the MVP, and the NBA Should Let Him Have It
Luka Doncic Deserves the MVP, and the NBA Should Let Him Have It
Luka Doncic left Thursday night’s game in Oklahoma City with a left hamstring injury. He’s done for the regular season. The MRI is Friday. The playoffs are a question mark.
And the most ridiculous part of all of it? The biggest debate right now isn’t about his health. It’s about whether the NBA’s own rulebook is going to rob him of the award he’s earned more than anyone else in the league this year.
Doncic has played 64 games. The cutoff for award eligibility is 65.
One game.
His agent, Bill Duffy, has already announced that the Lakers will file an “Extraordinary Circumstances Challenge” to keep Doncic in the running. The league’s collective bargaining agreement allows for it. The question is whether the NBA will actually honor the spirit of its own rule, or hide behind the letter of it.
What the Rule Was Actually For
The 65-game rule was introduced before the 2023-24 season for one reason: load management. The league was tired of watching healthy superstars sit out nationally televised games to rest their knees. Fans were buying tickets to see Kawhi Leonard and getting a DNP-Rest. The rule was supposed to fix that.
Luka Doncic did not load manage. He played 64 out of 77 games. He missed two for the birth of his second daughter in Slovenia. He missed one for a suspension after picking up his 16th technical foul. He missed the rest for injuries he tried to play through, including recurring ankle soreness and a hamstring issue that first cost him time in February.
The guy flew to Ljubljana for the birth of his daughter on December 4, then flew back across the Atlantic and was on the court that Sunday against Philadelphia with 31 points, 15 rebounds, and 11 assists. That’s not someone dodging games.
If the extraordinary circumstances provision exists for anyone, it exists for this.
The Season He’s Had
Forget the 65-game debate for a second. Look at what Doncic actually did this year.
He leads the league in scoring at 33.8 points per game. He’s averaging 7.8 rebounds and 8.3 assists alongside it. He’s shooting 47.6 percent from the field and 36.6 percent from three.
He opened the season with 43 points, 12 rebounds, and nine assists in his first game. Then 49 points, 11 rebounds, and eight assists in his second. Then 44, 12, and six in his third. Three consecutive 40-point games to start a season. The only other player in NBA history to do that was Wilt Chamberlain.
On March 19, he scored 60 points in Miami. He put up 39 of those 60 in the second half. It was the first time a Laker scored 60 since Kobe Bryant did it in his final game on April 13, 2016. Doncic also became the first player in NBA history to record at least 60 points, five steals, and nine three-pointers in the same game.
In March, he averaged 37.5 points, 8.0 rebounds, 7.4 assists, and 2.3 steals on 49.2/39.2/79.4 shooting splits. During a nine-game winning streak, he averaged 40 points per game and scored at least 30 in every single one of those wins. He became the first player to average 40 points over a six-game road stretch since Michael Jordan in 1986.
All of this while going through a public separation from his fiancee, a custody battle over his two daughters, and the emotional weight of not having seen his children since December.
“Basketball is giving me some kind of peace when I play a game,” he said after dropping 51 on Chicago in mid-March, two days after confirming the split.
Why Him Over the Others
Victor Wembanyama is having a remarkable season in San Antonio. The Spurs are 58-18, second in the West, and Wembanyama’s defensive impact is generational. He’s averaging 24.7 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 3.1 blocks while anchoring a top-three defense. His case is real.
But Wembanyama plays 29.2 minutes per game. No MVP in NBA history has won the award averaging fewer than 30 minutes a night. The previous low was Giannis Antetokounmpo at 30.4 in 2019-20. He’s 19th in the league in scoring and 131st in assists. The Spurs are built so deep around him that his individual dominance, while undeniable on the defensive end, doesn’t carry the same weight on offense. The argument for Wembanyama is that defense is half the game. The counterargument is that the Spurs barely need him to score, and they’ve been winning big even when he has quiet nights.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 31.6 points for the 61-16 Thunder. He won the award last year. He’s been brilliant again. But he also missed nine straight games with an abdominal strain this season and only recently crossed the 65-game threshold himself. If SGA gets credit for hitting 65 games after missing significant time to injury, the same grace should extend to Doncic at 64.
Nikola Jokic is putting up 27.7 points, 13.0 rebounds, and 10.8 assists, because he’s Nikola Jokic and averaging a triple-double is just what he does. But the Nuggets are 49-28, and Jokic missed a month-long stretch with his own injury. His case has faded.
Doncic leads the league in scoring. He’s top five in assists league-wide. The Lakers have a winning percentage above .650 with Doncic in the lineup and hover around .500 without him. He took a franchise that traded away Anthony Davis and LeBron James’s longtime co-star and turned them into the third seed in the West at 50-27.
The value argument isn’t close. Take Doncic off the Lakers and they’re a play-in team. Take Wembanyama off the Spurs and they still have a loaded roster. Take SGA off the Thunder and they still have the deepest team in basketball.
That’s what “most valuable” means.
Let Him Have It
The NBA created the extraordinary circumstances provision for situations exactly like this one. A player who played 64 games, missed two for the birth of his child on another continent, missed one for a technical foul suspension, and missed the rest because his body broke down. Not because he chose to sit.
Luka Doncic had the best individual season in the NBA this year. He did it on a new team, in a new city, through a midseason trade last February, through personal turmoil that would have derailed most people, and through a body that kept fighting him every step of the way.
If the league looks at all of that and says the number 64 matters more than what happened in those 64 games, then the rule has failed the exact kind of player it was never meant to punish.
Give him the exemption. Give him the MVP. He earned both.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
