After another dazzling offensive performance by Luka Dončić to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to a 128-110 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, Austin Reaves fully believes the five-time All-Star could average 40 points per game.

ESPN’s Dave McMenamin posed the question to Reaves about Dončić scoring 40 points per game for an entire season.

“Yes,” Reaves said. “He’s so good, it’s weird.”

Dončić finished Friday’s win with 49 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists in just 35 minutes. He has scored 92 points through the first two games of the season, the fourth-highest total for any two-game span in NBA history.

Head coach JJ Redick joked after the game that he kept Dončić in the game late into the fourth quarter even the Lakers were up by 23 so he could get to 50 points.

Wilt Chamberlain is the only player in NBA history to average at least 40 points per game in a season, accomplishing the feat twice in 1961-62 (50.4) and 1962-63 (44.8). He also holds the top four scoring seasons by points per game.

Michael Jordan has the top non-Chamberlain scoring season in NBA history when he averaged 37.1 points in 1986-87.

In the last 20 years, the only players who averaged at least 35 points per game for a full season were Kobe Bryant in 2005-06 (35.4) and James Harden in 2018-19 (36.1).

It will be hard for Dončić to keep up this pace over a full season for a lot of reasons, not least of which is his shooting volume will almost certainly go down when LeBron James returns from injury.

Dončić has shot the ball 50 times through two games out of necessity because the Lakers don’t have a lot of reliable high-volume shooters on the roster. It’s basically him and Reaves at this point.

His career-high in field-goal attempts in a season was 23.6 during the 2023-24 season and he averaged 33.9 points per game.

Dončić averaged 20.0 field-goal attempts in 28 games with the Lakers last season after the trade with the Dallas Mavericks. That would have been his fewest in a full season since his rookie year in 2018-19.

Even with the Lakers committed to building their infrastructure around Dončić, it’s not like James will be a bystander on the court when he returns. Dončić is also on this early scoring heater by shooting 62.0 percent from the field, more than 15 percentage points higher than his career mark (46.8).

We’ve seen enough from Dončić throughout his NBA career thus far that it would be foolish to underestimate him accomplishing anything. If he has set a goal of averaging 40.0 points per game for a full season, he’s definitely doing everything possible to make it happen.