Luka Doncic scored another 40 points on Wednesday night, helping the Los Angeles Lakers to a 116-103 road win over the Sacramento Kings. He joined Kobe Bryant and Elgin Baylor as the only Lakers to score 35-plus points in six straight games.
After the win, Lakers coach JJ Redick said this is “probably” the hottest stretch of basketball he can remember from Doncic.
“This and March,” Redick said. “The entire month of March last year.”
A Run That Rivals Last Season
Last season, in 16 March games, Doncic averaged 37.5 points on 49.2% shooting overall and 39.2% from three-point range on 12.8 attempts. That surge included a 51-point game in a home win over the Chicago Bulls and 100 combined points during a two-night road run against the Houston Rockets and Miami Heat.
“He closed out Houston for the second win in three nights,” Redick said. “Then we went to Miami, got in at 4 a.m. and he had 60 [points]. That stretch was pretty magical.”
The current run to open this regular season rivals it statistically. Doncic scored 52 points in a road win over the Utah Jazz on October 25 and followed that with 41, 37, 45, 42 and 40 in his next five games.
Doncic became the first player in NBA history to record six straight games of 35-plus points, five-plus rebounds, five-plus assists and five-plus made three-pointers.
Asked whether he had ever been hotter, Doncic was measured in his response.
“Maybe,” Doncic said. “I don’t know. I’ve had some good stretches in my career. Obviously, this could be one of the highest ones. But still some work to do.”
Fast Starts Against the Kings
Doncic has been making his presence felt early in games. Against the Kings, he made jumpers from 16, 27, 29 and 30 feet during one second-quarter stretch, going on a personal 11-2 run to break the game open.
That gave him 23 points before halftime. It was the sixth consecutive game in which Doncic scored 20 or more points in the first half. He had done so once before as a member of the Dallas Mavericks in 2023, and Allen Iverson did it in 2005, the only such first-half streaks in the past 30 seasons.
“He comes down [in the second quarter] and makes three shots in a row that there’s only five guys in the NBA can make,” Redick said. “All of a sudden a tie ballgame is a nine- or 10-point lead. The team feeds off that.”
Lakers Ride the Wave
The Lakers did just that, stretching their lead as high as 18 points on the way to a runaway win over the 1-7 Kings. Doncic finished with 40 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, and the Lakers improved to 7-2 this season.
“You can call it a wave, you can call it a tsunami, you can call it whatever you want,” Lakers centre Walker Kessler said. “He’s scoring the ball. If you want to call it a wave, we’re surfing the wave a little bit.”