Luka Doncic won the ESPY award for the 2024 NBA Player of the Year Thursday ahead of the 2024 ESPYs event.
The ESPYs, ESPN’s sports-award show that’s been running since 1993, are decided by the fans, and Doncic beat out fellow nominees Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Jayson Tatum. Jokic took home the 2024 MVP award in May, while Doncic finished third.
Doncic’s ESPY win comes off the heels of the best season of his NBA career. He led the league in scoring at 33.9 point per game, while leading the Mavericks to the NBA Finals for the first time since the 2011 championship. It was an impressive run that saw Doncic and the Mavericks dispatch a higher-seeded opponent in each round of the Western Conference Playoffs, culminating in a dominant five-game win against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference Playoffs, where Doncic drilled a game-winner on the road in the final seconds of Game 2 and winning the Western Conference Finals MVP award. Dallas’ season ended in a five-game loss to the Boston Celtics in the 2024 NBA Finals.
Other season highlights included Doncic’s career-high 73-point performance against the Atlanta Hawks (the fourth most points in a single game in NBA history), starting another All-Star game, and earning his fifth straight All-NBA First Team honor. Doncic also set a career-high in triple doubles this season with 21.
Doncic’s basketball season is currently over, with Slovenia losing to Greece in an Olympic qualifying match. The Mavericks superstar will now have about three months to rest and prepare for another NBA season which will start in late October, this time with a new teammate to help try and keep the Mavericks in championship contention — four-time NBA champion Klay Thompson, who the Mavericks signed in early July.