The Los Angeles Lakers are enjoying a strong run this season. They are currently holding a 48-26 record and are looking well on track for a playoff spot. However, even during this positive stretch, there’s been one surprising development.
Luka Dončić has slipped down the MVP rankings after being at the top not too long ago. His teammate Austin Reaves recently spoke about this situation, and it’s clear he doesn’t quite understand it either.
Austin Reaves Questions Luka Dončić’s Drop in MVP Rankings
After the Lakers beat the Brooklyn Nets on Friday night, Reaves was asked in an interview about how Dončić has been helping the team offensively.
Reaves did not answer that question directly, but he went on to something more interesting. He brought up that Dončić is somehow slipping in the MVP race, and he made it clear he doesn’t get it.
“He continues to drop in the MVP race, which is insane to me. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Maybe he’s gotta score 60, I don’t know,” Reaves said during the interview.
Reaves even pointed out that maybe Dončić needs to go out and drop 60 points to get back to the top of the conversation. The funny thing is that just five games ago, against the Miami Heat, Dončić actually did score 60 points. Yet, here we are.
It is hard to argue against Dončić’s case for MVP when looking at his numbers. He is the leading scorer in the league this season, averaging 33.7 points per game. He is third in the league in assists at 8.2 per game.
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He ranks second in 3-pointers made. He has 15 games this season in which he scored at least 40 points.
Moreover, he has been named the Western Conference Player of the Week in each of the last two weeks. Over the last 12 games, he has scored at least 30 points in every single one of them. That is a level of consistency that does not come around often.
With all of that going on, who exactly is ahead of him? Victor Wembanyama is sitting first, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is second, and Nikola Jokić is third.
Nobody is going to say Wembanyama isn’t talented. He clearly is. But averaging 24.2 points per game and sitting 14th in the scoring charts, while Dončić leads the league in that category, makes it hard to understand how Wembanyama is ahead of him in the MVP race.
The one area where Wembanyama genuinely stands out is shot-blocking, where his 3.1 blocks per game lead the entire league. That is impressive, no question.
But it raises the question of whether the Week 23 MVP rankings are being decided largely on defensive impact. It is hard to say, and honestly, it is confusing.
In Friday’s win over the Nets, Reaves scored 26 points, whereas Dončić added 41 points. The Lakers had a good start. They led by 5 points at the end of the first quarter and 2 at halftime.
In the second half, they outscored Brooklyn by 15 points, a margin the Nets were unable to overcome, losing 116-99.
It remains to be seen whether Dončić’s MVP ranking gets a bump back up in the coming weeks.
