p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n
Luka Doncic will hold down leadership responsibilities until LeBron James can return to the court following a sciatic nerve injury.<\/p>\n
(Robert Gauthier \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
General managers surveyed by NBA.com<\/a> gave Luka Doncic<\/a> the second-most votes to be named most valuable player. The dynamic guard finished third in MVP voting in 2024 when he powered the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals and led the league in scoring.<\/p>\n Doncic proved he can get back to that form by wowing on the international stage at EuroBasket and dazzling in his limited preseason action. But most importantly, he\u2019s settled into L.A. after last season\u2019s seismic trade. The comfort has brought Doncic\u2019s true personality back on the court as he traded jerseys with teammates in practice, cracked a sarcastic joke about when he \u201chad to carry\u201d Redick when they were teammates in Dallas and treated his teammates to a Porsche driving field trip.<\/p>\n Doncic can always deliver MVP-caliber numbers, but by taking on a larger leadership role, he hopes to be in position for more meaningful prizes.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s motivated by winning,\u201d Redick said. \u201cI know this because I talk to him about it all the time. He\u2019s motivated by winning and if we win at a high level, he will be in that conversation for MVP.\u201d<\/p>\n Doncic still finished well behind MVP favorite Nikola Jokic, who got 67% of the general manager votes compared to Doncic\u2019s second-place 10%. The Lakers have not had an MVP since Kobe Bryant in 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> Luka Doncic will hold down leadership responsibilities until LeBron James can return to the court following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6223,4464,7550,10352,48,52,51,10356,1415,479,47,50,49,7551,10355,3906,10353,6811,1414,10354,9084],"class_list":["post-13967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-end","tag-floor","tag-gabe-vincent","tag-hectic-offseason","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-laker","tag-lakers","tag-little-bit","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-luka-doncic","tag-maxi-kleber","tag-month","tag-national-team","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-redick","tag-third-day","tag-training-camp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}