The Lakers 'live on a spaceship,' and Luka Dončić looks like the best damn pilot in the galaxy

Perhaps, while watching him flame-broil the Toronto Raptors on Sunday night to the tune of 45 points on 12-for-23 shooting with eight 3-pointers, you found yourself thinking, “Man, Luka Dončić is on an all-time heater to start the season.” Well, if it seems that way, it’s because he very, very much is:Luka Dončić (226) becomes the third player in NBA history since 1960 to tally 225+ points through his first six games of a season, joining Michael Jordan (1986) and Wilt Chamberlain (2x) 😳 https://t.co/Y2bo9xWcywpic.twitter.com/k15DP61Qie— NBA History (@NBAHistory) November 2, 2026"You need three guys to guard him," Lakers big man Sandro Mamukelashvili said, according to ESPN. "I have a feeling that every time Luka plays, it's like 35-plus [points]." Pretty close, Mamu. It’s actually four times in six games this season. (The last four, if you’re keeping score.)Much of the post-game commentary about Dončić’s performance in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 131-125 win over the Raptors focused on his defensivework: on the 15 defensive rebounds he pulled down, on the five steals he snagged and six deflections he piled up, on the charges he took to draw offensive fouls and get the Lakers another possession. That certainly matters; Dončić is no stranger to catching hell for lacking defensive effort on the sport’s grandest stage, and these Lakers will need him to put his best foot forward on that end if they hope to get back to that stage themselves."We've been relying on our offense a lot," Lakers center Walker Kessler told reporters after a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers last week. "And we have a very, very good offense and a lot of great scorers. But that's not gonna be the only thing that gets us to win a championship here."It won’t. It’ll be the main thing, though. Because what the Lakers did, after ending the somewhat awkward stuck-between-stations stint that stretched from Dončić’s arrival at the 2025 trade deadline and the team bidding farewell to LeBron James this summer, was build A Luka Dončić Team. And if there’s one thing A Luka Dončić Team is going to do, it’s score a truckload of points — with the lion’s share of them coming off the fingertips of No. 77.Sunday’s monstrous performance against the Raptors made Dončić just the second player since the NBA began tracking steals in 1973 to score 45 points, collect 15 rebounds, dish five assists and grab five steals in a single game — joining, as luck would have it, Anthony Davis, the man whom the Lakers traded to Dallas to secure Dončić’s services nearly two years ago. It was his 24th career 45-point game, tying George Gervin for 10th on the all-time list, and his 11th career 45-point, 10-rebound, five-assist outing — more than anybody but Laker legends Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor.Six times, Dončić has suited up for the Lakers this season; three times, he’s topped 40 points. He is now averaging more than one point per minute — a historical rate of offensive onslaught that nobody has surpassed since Wilt did it 65 years ago.This isn’t normal. Luka just makes it seem that way.“It feels like a supernova, but it also feels normal,” Lakers head coach J.J. Redick told reporters after Sunday’s win. “We live on a spaceship and we’re going at the speed of light at all times when he’s on the court.”Dončić has opened the season looking like the best damn pilot in the galaxy, leading the NBA in scoring at 37.7 points per game, 8.1 points more than second-place Tyrese Maxey. That 8.1-point gap between first and second place is roughly the same as the gap between Maxey and Indiana Pacers forward Pascal Siakam, whose 21.4 points per game rank 28th in the NBA.Dončić leads the NBA in made field goals per game, in 3-pointers made and attempted per game and in free-throws made and attempted per game. He’s converting on all those looks at or near career-best rates, shooting 78% at the rim, 53% from floater range, 47% on long-2 midrange looks, 90% from the free-throw line, and 43.2% from long distance. He’s also tied for ninth in the NBA in assists, dishing 7.3 dimes per contest, making him one of two players in the top 10 in both categories, alongside Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics. Combine the points that Dončić is generating by setting up his big men at the rim and shooters on the perimeter with the ones that he’s scoring himself, and he’s creating 55.3 points of offense for the Lakers per game — most in the NBA, according to Databallr.Including plays where he shoots or passes to a teammate who shoots, Dončić’s pick-and-rolls are producing 1.18 points per play, the third-highest mark among players who’ve run at least 50 pick-and-rolls, according to Synergy Sports Technology’s tracking. His isolations are generating 1.22 points per possession — fifth-best among players who’ve finished at least 20 one-on-one trips. When he orchestrates from the post, the Lakers have scored 1.36 points per trip — fourth-most among players to log at least 10 such plays.Add it all up, and the Los Angeles offense has been an absolute buzzsaw with Luka at the controls. The Lakers have scored a scorching 130.7 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions in Dončić’s minutes; as a point of comparison, the league-leading Rockets’ offense averages 122.1. They’re shooting the cover off the ball from everywhere with him on the floor: 80% at the rim, 58% from midrange and 43% from 3-point land.They’ve been elite in the half-court, with Dončić poking and prodding and bending coverages until they snap. They’ve been even better in transition, where Dončić’s combination of excellent defensive rebounding for a wing and perpetual eyes-up scanning for hit-ahead opportunities allow L.A. to get out and run into easy buckets:“When he has it going, it’s like, pick your poison, cause he can just make any shot,” Redick said. “And then you start putting two on the ball, and everybody else is the beneficiary of that. He’s a terrific offensive engine.”That engine is running red-hot to start the season, pacing the Lakers to a 5-2 record behind the NBA’s No. 3 offense, with Dončić playing like an MVP frontrunner — and getting the help he needs from the Lakers’ other core pieces.Second banana Austin Reaves is averaging 23 points and five assists per game on 52/40/88 shooting. New center Kessler is holding up his end of the bargain, shooting a league-best 75.4% from the field, averaging 10 rebounds and three blocks per game, and holding opponents to a microscopic 41.3% at the rim when he’s the closest defender; that’s the best mark of any interior deterrent to face at least 25 up-close shots, according to Second Spectrum tracking.All told, the Lakers have blitzed opponents by 84 points in 126 minutes with Dončić, Reaves and Kessler on the court together — the best point differential of any three-man unit in the league thus far — and their core lineups have largely been lights out, with a number of role players (Mamukelashvili, Ziaire Williams, Matisse Thybulle, et al.) providing the right kind of production and filling in the gaps around that high-priced, high-wattage core.The spaceship could hit some turbulence, though. The Lakers have played one of the league’s easier schedules thus far; three of their five wins have come against the Clippers and Jazz. They’re also outperforming their expected field goal percentage to a higher degree than any other team in the league, according to multipleshot-qualitymetrics.If that red-hot collective shooting normalizes — and if the ball-security issues that have L.A. ranking 28th in team turnover percentage, with Dončić and Reaves sitting first and second in the league in total cough-ups — then the Lakers could be in for some regression … especially if, y’know, Luka doesn’t continue to average like 38 points per game on Prime Steph shooting and Prime Harden usage for a full season.Of note: Luka’s never gotten to the basket less. His 18 drives per game are the third-lowest average since entering the NBA, and a career-low 9% of his shot attempts have come at the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass. He’s balanced that out by taking more than half of his attempts from 3-point land for the first time in his career, which is a pretty good idea when you’re making them; what happens, though, if those stepbacks aren’t cashing in at a 43% clip?If and when that comes, some of those other shortcomings — the hole at power forward, the lack of another viable ball-handler to help Reaves buoy the offense when Dončić rests, the worrisome lack of rebounding and interior heft when Kessler’s off the floor, etc. — could become more glaring. For now, though, the Lakers are off to what’s been by and large a glass-half-full start: a top-three offense with a just-below-average defense, outscoring opponents by 7.5 points-per-100 (a 58-win pace), with Dončić looking like the best player on the floor damn near every time he sets foot on it, somehow making the obscene look routine. It doesn’t seem possible that a spaceship like these Lakers can keep going at the speed of light without eventually slowing down. That’s the thing about superstars like Dončić, though: When they’ve got it going, the limits of physics and history and even our imaginations can just seem to fade away."All of the great, great players that have ever played have also been in the 1% competitor [level]," Lakers assistant coach Greg St. Jean recently told Thuc Nhi Nguyen of the Los Angeles Times. "They've always been the guy that is able to inspire the players around him and be able to do things that don't even seem like they're possible. And he does that nightly."