Luka Dončić's MVP Season Is Loading

It's almost August. In the NBA, that means it's prime "muscle watch" season. This week, Luka Dončić, with an assist from Men's Health, joined the conversation.

And the conversation suddenly got real loud.

After months of near-constant picking at his physique (or lack thereof) after Luka's infamous trade to the Los Angeles Lakers, he suddenly looks as trim as he has in years. He hasn't looked like this player since perhaps as far back as his rookie campaign in 2018-19.

And he's gotten there with a commitment to both his workouts and his diet.

According to the profile, Luka is doing two-a-days that blend weight lifting, agility work and shooting drills in Croatia, while also "sticking to a gluten-free, low-sugar diet that includes at least 250 grams of protein and one almond milk-fueled shake a day."

The results, mere months after his first abbreviated campaign with the Lakers ended in April, are obvious.

If this version of Luka makes it through EuroBasket (where he will represent Slovenia) and into the 2025-26 NBA campaign, he may finally capture his first elusive MVP award.

Box plus/minus (or BPM) "is a basketball box score-based metric that estimates a basketball player’s contribution to the team when that player is on the court," and anything over 8.0 is considered to represent an MVP-like campaign.

Luka's been over that mark in four of his seven NBA seasons. He had a career-high 9.9 in 2023-24, but he's never finished higher than third in MVP voting.

Playing at the same time as Nikola Jokić has certainly affected his chances, but years of slowly settling into a doughier frame didn't help either. His apparent or perceived lack of commitment to his fitness was one of the explicitly stated reasons the Dallas Mavericks moved him. And the way they publicly flaunted that reason may backfire.

If Luka returns to NBA action with the same level of explosiveness that he had in his first couple seasons (or even scarier, with more), while maintaining the more nuanced aspects of the game that he's developed throughout his career, we may be in store for the most dominant Dončić season to date.

And that's pretty wild to think about.

In 2023-24, the year he posted that 9.9 BPM, Luka averaged 9.8 assists, 9.2 rebounds, 4.1 threes, 1.4 steals and a league-leading 33.9 points. He shot 57.3 percent on twos and 38.2 percent from deep.

That postseason, he averaged 28.9 points, 9.5 rebounds and 8.1 assists. He led the Mavs all the way to the NBA Finals as a 24-year-old.

The respective trajectories of his career and his partnership with Dallas seemed like they could only be headed up, but injuries limited his availability in 2024-25. And of course, in February, we learned that the organization was essentially out on him as a franchise cornerstone when it authored perhaps the most shocking and inexplicable trade in league history.

Suddenly, an all-time great offensive engine who was still shy of his athletic prime was exchanged for a post-prime play finisher who's long struggled with injuries (Anthony Davis), just one first-round draft pick and a somewhat promising wing (Max Christie).

The Mavericks and general manager Nico Harrison tried to sell the move as a win-now transaction that would help them become more of a defense-first title contender.

But the likelier outcome was always that it would motivate the once-in-a-generation talent headed out the door to remind everyone just how good he is.

Athletes do not reach Luka's level by accident. It takes an absurd level of skill to average 30.0 points, 8.8 rebounds and 8.7 assists over the course of six NBA seasons (which is what Dončić has done since the start of 2019-20).

But absurd skill doesn't always translate to MVPs or championships. That often takes adversity.

For Michael Jordan, it was the "Jordan Rules" Detroit Pistons of the late 1980s. For Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, it was the motivation to beat each other. LeBron James had to go through the 2011 Finals before he finally broke through in 2012.

For Luka, the last 12 months and change, which include his Finals loss to Boston, the staggering trade to L.A. and Dallas' attempts to explain that deal, could be the fires that refine him into his final form.

And that final form could very well lead to his first MVP.