DONCIC'S THIRD STRAIGHT 40 POINT GAME BEATS THE KINGS

Luka Doncic scored 40 points in the Lakers' 116 to 103 win over the Kings on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, his third straight 40 point game and his fourth in the last five. He added nine rebounds and seven assists at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, and the win was the Lakers' third in a row, lifting them to 7 and 2. It was his fifth 40 point game of the season, in a season that is nine games old.

11 of 23, 6 of 13 and 12 of 13

The shooting line is the story of the night. Doncic made 11 of 23 from the field, 6 of 13 from three and 12 of 13 from the free throw line. Six threes account for 18 points and the free throws for 12, which means 30 of his 40 points came from those two sources, and only five of his 11 field goals were twos.

Split by source, the 40 points were 18 from threes, which is 45 percent, 12 from free throws, which is 30 percent, and 10 from twos, which is 25 percent. Twos were the smallest slice. That is not a hot shooting night in the usual sense. An 11 of 23 night is 48 percent from the field. The scoring came from the line and from the arc, which means it came from drawing contact and making what the defense gave him, not from a run of tough two point makes.

Reaves 21, Kessler 15 and Four Blocks

Austin Reaves scored 21 points, and Walker Kessler had 15 points, eight rebounds, four blocks and three steals. Those two lines are the part of the box score that explains the margin: the Lakers won by 13, Doncic scored a bit over a third of their 116 points, and the supporting cast produced the other 76.

Reaves and Kessler combined for 36 points, which with Doncic's 40 makes 76 of the 116, and the remaining 40 came from the rest of the roster. The Kings finished with 103. Doncic's 40 points alone were 39 percent of that total.

Forty Five Three Days Earlier

The streak includes the November 1 game against Toronto, when Doncic scored 45 points with 15 rebounds, a season high for rebounds, in a 131 to 125 Lakers win at Crypto.com Arena. The Raptors made it close late, and theScore's recap headline described the Lakers surviving a late scare. Three days later he was at 40 in Sacramento.

Those two lines, 45 and 15 on a Sunday and 40, nine and seven on a Wednesday, put him in the same scoring range in two different kinds of game. The difference is where the production came from. On November 1 it came with 15 boards; on November 4 it came with 12 trips made at the line.

A Different Team Than March

The Lakers that Doncic carried in March had LeBron James. On March 19, 2026, he scored 60 points against the Heat, the first 60 point game by a Laker since Kobe Bryant scored 60 in his farewell game on April 13, 2016, with LeBron adding a triple double of 19 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists. LeBron left in July. He took the veteran minimum to join the Sixers on a two year, eight million dollar contract.

That changes how these 40 point nights read. In March Doncic scored 60 next to a triple double. In November he is scoring 40 with Reaves as the second option and Kessler protecting the rim, and the team is 7 and 2 with a third straight win.

What Friday Tests

The Lakers play Portland on Friday, according to RotoBaller. A fourth straight 40 point game would be his sixth of the year in the Lakers' tenth game. RotoBaller also reports that Doncic has now posted at least 35 points, five rebounds, five assists and five three pointers in six straight games, which it calls the longest such streak in NBA history; that claim appears in one source, so it stands on RotoBaller's reporting alone.

The number to watch against Portland is the free throw count. Twelve of 13 at the line was 30 percent of the scoring on Wednesday night, and a line that high rests on how often the whistle comes, which the other team partly decides.