The reigning scoring champion is healthy again and playing on a roster that was rebuilt around him, so the case for a repeat is stronger than it was a year ago.
Point guard Luka Doncic won the NBA scoring title last season while playing just 64 games, and the Los Angeles Lakers spent the summer building a team that should make a second one even easier to reach.
Doncic averaged 33.5 points per game to lead the league, and he did it while sharing the offense with forward LeBron James and while a hamstring injury wiped out the final weeks of his season.
Both of those obstacles are gone, which is why so many previews already treat next season's scoring race as close to settled.
The Case Is Simple
Bleacher Report placed Doncic first in its projection of next season's top scorers, ahead of guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and guard Anthony Edwards, and the logic is hard to argue with.
James left for the Philadelphia 76ers in free agency, which removed a high-volume scorer from the Lakers offense, and the front office replaced him with center Walker Kessler, a rim-runner who does not need the ball to be effective.
Kessler dealt with injuries for most of last season, so the fit is still mostly on paper, but that projection piece argues a lob finisher of his type has unlocked the highest-scoring version of Doncic before.
Guard Austin Reaves re-signed on a long-term deal and remains the secondary creator, and nobody else on this roster is going to compete with Doncic for shots.
That is the whole formula, because scoring titles usually go to the player whose team needs every one of his attempts, and no team in the league is set up to funnel its offense to one man quite like this one.
Health Is the Only Real Question
Doncic suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain in April, missed the rest of the regular season and never got on the floor in the playoffs, so a season that ended with a scoring title also ended with an empty spring.
He has since said the injury is fully behind him.
"I took a real break from basketball the first few weeks after the season ended to rehab my body. My recovery went great, and I'm 100 percent healthy again," Doncic wrote in a message to fans reported by The Athletic's Dan Woike.
The word from his Slovenian national team circle has been just as encouraging, and a healthy October start would let him build a points lead before the schedule gets heavy.
What Repeating Would Take
Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 31.1 points for an Oklahoma City team that won 64 games, and Edwards scored 28.8 a night and now has more playmaking around him in Minnesota, so the chase pack is legitimate.
The difference is volume, because no other star carries his team's shot load the way Doncic does, and the Lakers shaped their roster this summer to keep it that way.
Losing James also means losing his defense and his organizing presence, and there is one more departure that could sting more than people expect, so Los Angeles will need Doncic on the floor closer to 75 games than 64.
If he gets there, a second straight scoring title starts to look like the safest bet on the board.
