SACRAMENTO -- By dropping another 40 points Wednesday night, Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Doncic joined Kobe Bryant and Elgin Baylor as the only Lakers to ever score 35-plus points in six straight games.
In the aftermath of the 116-103 road win over the Sacramento Kings, Lakers coach JJ Redick said this is "probably" the hottest stretch of basketball he can remember from Doncic.
"This and March," Redick said. "The entire month of March last year."
Last season, in 16 March games, Doncic averaged 37.5 points on 49.2% shooting overall and 39.2% from 3 on 12.8 attempts. That surge included a 51-point game in a home win over the Chicago Bulls and 100 combined points during a two-night road domination of the Houston Rockets and Miami Heat.
"He closed out Houston for the second win in three nights," Redick said. "Then we went to Miami, got in at 4 a.m. and he had 60 [points]. That stretch was pretty magical."
The current run to open this regular season rivals it statistically. Doncic scored 52 points in a road win over the Utah Jazz on Oct. 25 and followed that with 41, 37, 45, 42 and 40 in his next five games.
Doncic became the first player in NBA history to record six straight games of 35-plus points, five-plus rebounds, five-plus assists and five-plus made 3s.
"Maybe," Doncic said when asked whether he had ever been hotter. "I don't know. I've had some good stretches in my career. Obviously, this could be one of the highest ones. But still some work to do."
Doncic has been lighting his flamethrower early in games. Against the Kings, he made jumpers from 16, 27, 29 and 30 feet during one second-quarter stretch, going on a personal 11-2 run to break the game open.
That gave him 23 points before halftime. It was the sixth consecutive game that Doncic scored 20 or more points in the first half. He did that once before as a member of the Dallas Mavericks in 2023, and Allen Iverson did it in 2005 -- the only such first-half streaks in the past 30 seasons.
"He comes down [in the second quarter] and makes three shots in a row that there's only five guys in the NBA can make," Redick said. "All of a sudden a tie ballgame is a nine- or 10-point lead. The team feeds off that."
The Lakers did, stretching their lead as high as 18 in what would become a runaway win over the 1-7 Kings. Doncic finished with 40 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, and the Lakers improved to 7-2 this season.
"You can call it a wave, you can call it a tsunami, you can call it whatever you want," Lakers center Walker Kessler said. "He's scoring the ball. If you want to call it a wave, we're surfing the wave a little bit."