Luka Doncic first player since Michael Jordan to open season with six 30+ point games

The Mavericks have started the season on something of a roller coaster, but their superstar, Luka Doncic’s season has opened more like a rocket ship.

Through six games, he’s leading the league in scoring, averaging a sensational 36.7 points per game. He’s just the sixth player to score 30 or more points in each of the first six games of the season and the first to do it since the inimitable Michael Jordan all the back in the 1986-87 season. One could argue Doncic’s break-neck start is something of a gift to the former NBA-great, seeing as how Luka’s signature shoe is part of the Jordan brand.

It’s early going still, but seeing Doncic off to such an auspicious start has got to be something of a salve to Mavs’ fans who watched Luka work himself into shape to start last year. Through six games in October in the 2021-22 season, Luka was averaging just 22.5 points on a .495 true shooting mark — both easily his worst of the year.

The scary part of all this is that this isn’t even Luka’s greatest scoring stretch. As Iztok Franco noted, he averaged 37.2 points across six games in February of 2022.

Perhaps it was playing in Eurobasket over the summer that kept Doncic primed and ready to hit the ground running this season, but whatever the cause, it’s a great sign for Dallas and a scary prospect for the rest of the league if Doncic is able to maintain anything close to this kind of offensive output. All this, mind you, is coming while Luka’s been struggling from deep, hitting on just 22.6% of his threes; well short of the 35% he shot last season. If that deep ball starts to fall, look out because his free throws are already looking better. As with anything at this point in the season, it’s a small sample size, but time will tell just how high Doncic’s ceiling is this season.