Luka Doncic needs some furnishing for the new house, but it won’t be an MVP trophy
Luka Doncic may be the best player in the NBA, but until the Mavs help him out he’ll never have an MVP trophy to bring home to his new pad.
The only way Doncic wins the MVP award without the Mavs finishing in the top of the Western Conference is if he is actually the second coming of Russell Westbrook.
The Mavs don’t want that. Nobody does.
.But Doncic appears to be headed that way, but he appears to be doing it the right way.
After an offseason that was a literal half-life of what it normally is, we are now just three weeks away from the start of the 2020-21 NBA regular season. Training camps open this week, and the Mavs began their on-court activities on Tuesday.
I have no idea how this 72-game season is all going to function, except to say that the NBA regular season is going to be every bit the mess that was the MLB regular season. Just as it appears that there are more coronavirus collapses in the NFL, college football and college basketball.
When asked on Tuesday what the key is to contending this season, Doncic said, “Which team is not going to have [COVID-]positive people.”
Should be the Mavs.
No NBA owner has publicly taken COVID safety measures more seriously than Mark Cuban.
Aside from that, the problem for the Mavs remains the problem: The West.
The defending champion Los Angeles Lakers are still the Lakers with LeBron James and Anthony Davis — and the conventional wisdom is that they actually got better during the short offseason. The Denver Nuggets are set to be a major issue for the Lakers, and the LA Clippers.
But the Mavericks are in position to move ahead of the Utah Jazz, the Houston Rockets, and they should be better than the rebuilding Oklahoma City Thunder.
This all hinges on Doncic actually improving on his absurd numbers from last season, the healthy return of Kristaps Porzingis from offseason knee surgery, and the new acquisitions doing something this team did poorly last season — defend.
Doncic as an MVP candidate
In the last 20 years, the NBA’s MVP winner has come from a team that has finished either first or second in the conference. And that player typically goes on to win the NBA Finals, too.
Westbrook is the exception. In the 2016-17 season, the NBA’s favorite shot-taker averaged a triple-double over the entire season to carry the Thunder to the sixth seed in the West. The league hadn’t seen that in 55 years. And the Thunder didn’t see the second round of the playoffs after they lost four of five to Houston.
Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James and the rest of the MVP winners this century all played on teams that were the either the best, or second-best, in the NBA during the regular season.
Doncic is not that far away from equaling Westbrook.
Only two players have averaged a triple-double during the regular season — points, rebounds, assists. Oscar Robertson did it in 1961-62. Westbrook did it in three straight seasons, from 2016-19.
Last season, Doncic averaged 28.8 points, 9.4 rebounds and 8.8 assists per game.
Unlike Westbrook, who needed to shoot and amass historic stats for the Thunder to be competitive, the Mavs are not in the position where Doncic needs to take every shot.
Also, the Mavs are not going to finish first or second in the West, but they did address some glaring needs in this hurried, messy offseason that will push themselves in that direction.
Mavs making a move up in the West
Adding veterans James Johnson and Josh Richardson in trades, and the return of point guard Jalen Brunson and forward Dwight Powell, make the Mavs a better team. And that will take the burden off Doncic.
“[Johnson] is a guy from afar who I’ve always thought would be a great fit with Luka Doncic,” Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said Monday.
The Mavs were a historically good offensive team last season. And not historically bad on defense, but they were not good.
They should be a better team defensively this season.
As a third-year player, Doncic should actually be better after what have been two consecutive All-Star seasons.
He should be one of the game’s top players, and he should be among the leaders for the MVP awards.
He just won have it for his mantel until the Mavs are at the top, too.
