Will Luka Doncic Ever Win an NBA MVP Award?

Luka Doncic keeps getting close, and after wrapping up one of the best individual seasons any Los Angeles Laker has ever had, he still does not have an MVP trophy.

The 27-year-old led the entire NBA in scoring at 33.5 points per game while also putting up 8.3 assists and 7.7 rebounds a night, helping the Lakers finish 53-29 as the fourth seed in the Western Conference.

But when the votes came in, Doncic finished fourth in MVP voting without a single first-place vote, which left a lot of people around the league scratching their heads.

This is far from the first time Doncic has come up short in the MVP race.

Back in 2023-24 while still with the Dallas Mavericks, Doncic finished third in MVP voting behind Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander after averaging a career-high 33.9 points per game and leading Dallas all the way to the NBA Finals.

That season felt like his best shot at the award, but Jokic's team record and overall numbers gave him the edge.

The year before that, in 2022-23, Doncic finished eighth, and this past season he was left out of the top three entirely despite winning the scoring title.

The numbers Doncic put up this season were really hard to ignore.

His 33.5 points, 8.3 assists, and 7.7 rebounds per game made him one of the most complete players in the league while shooting 47.6 percent from the field, and his March was one of the best months any Laker has ever had.

He scored 600 points that month alone, dropped 60 on the Miami Heat, and the Lakers went 15-2 with Doncic playing the best ball of his career.

Coach JJ Redick said he was "disappointed" Doncic was not named a finalist and pointed to a lack of media momentum during a stretch where the team went through a rough patch.

A hamstring injury on April 2 that ended his season early did not help his case with voters either.

Doncic is only 27 and already has six first-team All-NBA selections, two scoring titles, and a resume that puts him alongside legends like LeBron James and Tim Duncan at the same age.

The missing piece has always been team record, as his squads have never finished high enough in the standings to give voters a reason to pick him over guys on 60-plus-win teams, but that could change soon.

The Lakers front office is focused on building around him this offseason, and if they can add the right pieces to push into the top two or three in the West, the narrative will follow.

Luka Doncic winning an MVP feels less like a question of if and more like a question of how soon the rest of the league catches up to what he is already doing.