Luka Doncic continues to dominate for the Los Angeles Lakers and had one of his bets recent performances in Thursday's dominant 142-130 win over the Chicago Bulls. 

Doncic led the game with 51 points while shooting 17-31 from the field and 9-14 from three point range. Doncic also had 10 rebounds and nine assists to come just shy of a 50 point triple-double. 

Even more impressive than the sheer volume of points that Doncic racked up but the efficiency at which he did is is even more impressive.

Doncic has always been a strong shooter, but he's stepped it up to a new level in recent games.

"It's so important. It just sets up the rest of his game when he's making threes and obviously it gives us life," Lakers head coach JJ Redick said (via The Sporting Tribune). "It can be a kill shot some nights. It can be a run stopper some nights... He was phenomenal all night."

It can be difficult to quantify at times just how valuable Doncic has been for the Lakers, even with such massive, headline-grabbing performances. Even with with the way that Doncic took over, it was a reasonably close game with well-rounded performance from the Bulls at least making the game interesting. 

The entire starting five had at least 15 points, with Josh Giddey leading the way for the Bulls with 27 points. 

 Backing up Doncic were the usual suspects. Austin Reaves was behind him with 30 points while shooting 13-20 from the field while Deandre Ayton had a bounce back performance with 23 points on another massively efficient night shooting 10-13 from the field with 10 rebounds. 

The Lakers are finding a groove lately. They've won four straight and their offense is kicking back into gear the same way that they looked at the beginning of the season when it seemed like the Lakers would be running the league. 

The result of their recent surge has meant that the Lakers have climbed up to the third-seed in the Western Conference, which is a position they haven't seen in a long time. 

If there was ever a perfect time for the Lakers to step into a higher gear, it's right now. With less than 20 games left in the season, it's the right time for the Lakers to make a push to secure their seeding after treading water at the bottom of playoff contention for some time.