As we head into the All-Star Break, the Mavericks’ Luka Doncic is heavily in the mix for Most Valuable Player.

Just 47 games played, Doncic is leading the league in points per game (33.4), alongside 8.9 rebounds and 8.2 assists a night.

The main reason for this top-of-the-line, per-game figures is simple: his usage percentage.

On the year, Doncic has a usage percentage of 38.5%, which only trails Giannis Antetokounmpo by .5%.

This is par for the course for Luka, as he is the career leader in NBA history at 35.2%, which isn’t discussed as much as it should be. 

This is 1.9 points higher than Jordan, 3.4 points higher than Kobe, and even 3.6 points higher than LeBron.

So, if Luka is able to sustain this record-breaking pace throughout his career, what would his career stats look like after inflation against some of the game’s greats?

While looking at Luka’s career usage percentage, would he have a chance to surpass Kareem’s record in career points after inflation? 

In just 276 career games, Doncic has already scored 7,373 points. This means that at his per game average of 26.7 a night, it would allow him to pass the record in 1,390 more games, or around 20 more seasons.

That would give him a career total of 1,666 games, which is 106 more than Kareem needed to set the record.  This makes sense for a player that averages over 20 a night in his first 17 seasons. But how much of this production does Abdul-Jabaar owe to when he played? 

To look, let’s compare their first 4 seasons in a balanced era:

Since Kareem’s first 4 years came before the installation of the 3-point line, Luka’s numbers are converted to my pre-3-point line metric, but even after losing about 3 makes from beyond the arc a game, he still averages 1.5 points more a game than The Dream.

So, if Luka played the same number of games as Kareem did, Luka would be the new king of scoring with over 38,000 points (38,688).

He already has 50 career triple-doubles, with 20 of which coming before his 22nd birthday, which is the most in NBA history. 

He currently sits at 10th all-time, with a ways to go to catch Russell Westbrook with 194, and also have to surpass LeBron James at 105, Nikola Jokic with 79, and James Harden with 69. 

If we used the hypothetical number of games from the last video, 1,666, for all five of these active players, would Luka’s early pace put him at the top of the list? 

For this, we’ll use the expected league averages for future seasons.

With Luka’s current pace of 18.9% of games with a triple-double so far, both he and Nikola Jokic are on pace to easily surpass Westbrook’s recent record, and his projected total if he played 645 more games.

With Doncic hypothetically playing over 1,600 games, he would finish his career after inflation averaging over 20 a night, with roughly 8 assists and rebounds a game. Now, this is due in large part to his smaller sample size, but it shows how strong his first few years have been as a well-rounded offensive threat.

So, we’ll see how much this changes with another high-volume player in Kyrie Irving, as 1 of the 2 is likely to see their touches degrees in some way. 

But, as we’ve seen Irving take a secondary scoring approach behind Kevin Durant in Brooklyn, there’s a chance Luka could continue to play his style of basketball even alongside his new point guard.