ESPN's Tim Legler on Mavs' Luka Doncic: 'He's The MVP Favorite Right Now'

ESPN's Tim Legler has been a huge fan of what the Dallas Mavericks did at this season's trade deadline, and he believes Luka Doncic is now the NBA MVP favorite.

DALLAS — Before the trade deadline, Luka Doncic's MVP chances were looking slim, due to the simple fact that the Dallas Mavericks weren't winning enough games give him a real shot to bring home the award. However, with the Mavs riding a seven-game winning streak and looking more like a title contender after acquiring P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford, Doncic has pushed his way back into the MVP race.

ESPN's Tim Legler, who is also a former Maverick (1992-1994), has been a big fan of what the Mavs did at the trade deadline, placing them fourth on his top NBA title contenders list on a segment of Get Up earlier this week. Now, on the latest episode of The ALL NBA Podcast, Legler says he thinks Doncic is now the favorite to win MVP.

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"I'm actually going to put him as the favorite for me now. And it's based on my belief of what Dallas is going to do the rest of the year," Legler said. "Look, precedent's been set by the way. And it's not common, but if I recall, was Oklahoma City, like a six seed, when Westbrook won that award, when he averaged a triple-double.

"I think they were 16 that year, and he, he won it because, I mean, you know, Duran had left him. He was there by himself. He averaged a triple-double and, and he, you know, I think they won. If I recall, I think they were 45 and 37, or maybe it's 47 to 35. There's something like that. And they were like a success, and he won the MVP. So it's not common. Typically, you need to be up there near the top three."

When taking about Doncic's MVP chances, most media members agree that the Mavs need to get to at least the 50-win mark to give him the best chance of winning it. Legler believes that number is well within reach for the Mavs if they keep playing at their current pace.

"I wasn't sure earlier [this season]. Despite the numbers that Luka was putting up, where will they get to the number of wins to put them in the discussion? I think now there's a good chance they will," Legler said.

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"They've played 56 games. They've got 26 games left. Yeah. You go 20-6, let's just throw that out there, something like that, you're at 50, at 53 wins. At that point, you'll probably be pushing up onto the three and four seeds. I don't think you'll ultimately get up there into one and two, but you got a shot at four if you're top four."

It's not just the Mavs' win total that will determine if Doncic can win his first MVP or not, though. The five-time All-Star and four-time All-NBA First Teamer is in the middle of a historical statistical season, averaging a career-high and league-leading 34.3 points, 8.8 rebounds and career-high 9.6 assists while shooting 49.2 percent overall and a career-high 37.9 percent from deep.

"This is what everybody pays attention to: what Luka Doncic is doing right now. Because I didn't know, I had the researcher look it up cause I knew it was up there. And this is actual assisted field goals. This isn't like, 'Okay, he's averaging 11 assists a game. So that's just a round off a number.' No, these are actual points he's gotten on assists combined with his scoring," Legler said.

"It's a combination. It's 57. 4 points per game, direct offense from Luka scoring or assisting. And guess what? That is the most by any player in the history of this league in one season. No player has ever done it. Tiny Archibald had the record in the early '70s when he led the league in scoring and assists. Now, the point shot wasn't there, so that, you know, maybe he would have been higher, But he's not. The bottom line is Luka is playing modern basketball.

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“But that's the extent to which he is dominating right now. He is responsible for half of the points. They score every night,  So that's what he's doing. And this is historic stuff. And we know he's a clutch player. Like he's, he's great when you need him to be. He's worked harder at his defense and his conditioning.”

Thanks to their seven-game winning streak, the Mavs are currently out of the Play-In Tournament, sitting at sixth in the West. With 26 games left, Dallas is a half-game back of catching the New Orleans Pelicans at fifth, and 4.5 games back of catching the Los Angeles Clippers and Denver Nuggets at third and fourth respectively. If Doncic and the Mavs keep playing at the pace they have been, the MVP might be his to lose.

“I don't think anybody has grabbed control of [the MVP race],” Legler said. “I think it was wide open when [Joel] Embiid went down. And Luka wasn't getting talked about because the team wasn't good enough, but now they are watching out because this, this, this the best offensive player of the group, and they're now starting to win games, and people are paying attention to it. So I think Luka right now for me is my favorite."