Imagine being the statistical machine that Luka Doncic is. Imagine going absolutely nuclear in the month of March, further building on an already dominant campaign. Imagine that all leads to a large dose of winning and your team overachieving expectations. Now, imagine after all of that, you somehow slip in the MVP race. That last part is unfortunately all too real.
The Los Angeles Lakers and Doncic have shredded through this recent month. For a brief moment, it looked like the NBA could finally be coming around on the idea of giving Luka the first MVP award of his career. That fizzled fast.
After jumping up to the second spot in the NBA MVP ladder on the previous installment, Doncic somehow dropped on Friday's most recent edition. Despite all the incredible success, the Lakers superstar plummeted from second to fourth. The offensive machine now trails Victor Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Nikola Jokic (in that order).
Lakers fans have been losing their minds over the matter ever since, and rightfully so. In such a narrative-driven competition, Doncic will only get one real chance to make his case from here. That comes in the first week of April.
Luka and the Lakers must capture the narrative with two wins over the champs
The two toughest games left on the schedule for the Lakers are also the ones which could help Doncic make his last real push at winning the NBA MVP. Los Angeles will play the Oklahoma City Thunder twice in April. The first date will be on April 2 and the follow-up comes on April 7.
It should not have to be this way, but beating the Thunder in both of those matchups would go a long way for Doncic.
For starters, winning both games would offer two massive statement wins to the NBA world about the legitimacy of the Lakers and how great the team truly is. When searching for a driving force behind that success, Doncic will be impossible to ignore.
A second reason it would help is the head-to-head against not only last year's champs, but the reigning MVP. Even after losing his frontrunner position, SGA is still very much so a threat to win the award. Beat him twice and that effectively removes one member of the competition ahead of you.
Those wins would equal the playing field with the other rivals too. Both Wembanyama and Jokic, plus their respective teams, are perceived as the main competition to Thunder dominance. Insert yourself into the group and suddenly there is much more level ground.
In a perfect evaluation of value, none of this should matter. The way the MVP is voted upon is not that straightforward, though. Doncic needs the narrative. This would be his best way of capturing it.