By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
It took Luka Doncic six games into the 2020-21 regular season to provide a spectacle truly worthy of the young fellow who took the NBA by storm last season and became an MVP candidate his sophomore year in the league.
After sitting out the game against the Chicago Bulls with injury, Doncic returned to action with a powerful display of season-highs 33 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists to lead the Dallas Mavericks to a 113 – 110 win over the Houston Rockets.
He promised that this is just the beginning “I’m going to keep doing the conditioning, keep doing better, keep getting in better shape. We have a lot of games, so I’ll be in shape,” Doncic said after the match.
It wasn’t just Doncic’s first triple-double of the season but another performance that put him in the NBA’s and Mavericks‘ history books, in one way or another. The Slovenian point forward led the Mavericks in points, rebounds and assists for the 39th time setting a new franchise record by passing Dirk Nowitzki who retired with 38 games in this category (per Mavs PR).
Doncic registered his 26th triple-double in the NBA. This isn’t just the most by far by a player under 22 in the league history but twice the triple-doubles which Magic Johnson (the second in the list of most triple-doubles by an U22 player) by that age, per Stats Muse. The Mavs star actually now has more triple-doubles than Magic Johnson (13) and Ben Simmons (12) combined by the time they were 22.
There have only been five 30-15-10 triple-double performances in the history of the NBA and Doncic now has three of them after last night’s game, per Elias Sports Bureau. The other two belong to Magic and Oscar Robertson.