Dallas Mavs' Luka Doncic Becomes Youngest NBA Scoring Champion Since Kevin Durant

Luka Doncic set the Dallas Mavericks record for points scored in a single season and led the NBA with an average of 33.9 points per game.

Dalton Trigg | Apr 15, 2024

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

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Dallas Mavericks

In a year where Luka Doncic broke the Dallas Mavericks' franchise record for most points scored in a single season, he also led the NBA with an average of 33.9 points per game. Pair that 33.9 points with his 9.2 rebounds and 9.8 assists per game, and Doncic became the first player in league history to average that stat line.

Doncic, who turned 25 years old in February, became the youngest scoring champion since Kevin Durant did it during the 2011-12 season at 23 years old. During that season, Durant averaged 28.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists while finishing second to LeBron James in MVP voting.

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

That could be another parallel between Doncic and Durant, as No. 77 is widely expected to come up short in this season's MVP race to Denver Nuggets' Nikola Jokic. Despite Jokic himself saying that Doncic should be the MVP this year after putting up historic numbers and leading the Mavs to a 50-win season amid several key roster injuries and shakeups, many voters seem to disagree.

"I think he deserves the MVP, 100 percent," Jokic said of Doncic. "But it's not my decision, to be honest."

Kyrie Irving, who has meshed well alongside Doncic as his co-star, gave his pitch for why his teammate should win the MVP this season.

“His stats speak for themselves. He’s first in a lot of different categories," Irving said. "He’s held this team up when I wasn’t able to be in the lineup and I was injured. There are a lot of factors that I factor to his MVP case, and me as a brother of his, I have the utmost love and support to give him. I want to see him win MVP.

"If it’s not going to be this year, it’s going to be in the eventual future, or the near future."

Published Apr 15, 2024

DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.