Tim Hardaway, a 5 time NBA All Star, has tipped Luka Doncic of the LA Lakers to win this year’s NBA MVP award.
Support for NBA MVP cases, even pre-season, can come from all sorts of places. In the case of Luka Doncic, fresh off a stellar individual display at EuroBasket 2025, it turns out that none other than Tim Hardaway is backing him to win the top honour.
Hardaway backs Doncic
Luka Doncic flirted with the NBA MVP award in the 2023/24 season but that title was eventually won by Nikola Jokic. Prior to that, he had a good run in the Covid shortened season. Yet now, entering the 2025/26 season, Tim Hardaway has backed Luka to win the top individual prize.
“You know what? A lot of people are gonna be surprised. He actually should have probably won it one time, but I’m gonna go with Luka Doncic,” Hardaway told Matt Moore of The Action Network.
“I think that if he has a really, really good year. If he has a good year like he normally has and they end up in the upper echelons, 1-4 seed. Right around there. I think he has a really, really, really good chance of winning MVP. “
A strong endorsement
While Tim Hardaway never won the NBA MVP award himself, he still has the type of individual resume to make his voice matter in the debate. A 5 time All Star, Hardaway also has 1 All-NBA first team, 3 All-NBA second team, and 1 All-NBA third team accolades, in addition to winning Olympic gold with the USA in 2000.
In his interview with Moore, Hardaway said Luka Doncic should probably already have at least one MVP award. “He should have won it probably about two years ago. But he didn’t win it. He’s that talented. But he still gotta do other stuff. Just because you lose weight, he’s still gonna be the same Luka.”
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The overplayed talking point through Luka Doncic’s career has been his weight. As Tim Hardaway said in his interview with Moore, Doncic has lost weight but the LA Lakers man still has to show what it means.
Even the performances by Doncic at EuroBasket aren’t enough for Hardaway, he wants to see Luka show the difference in the NBA.
“This is not overseas. This is the NBA. You’re still gonna have to keep your feet in front of people. They are still gonna go at you. Just ’cause you lost weight, they don’t believe that you could play defense now,” he said.
“You can move your feet now. You are as agile as you should be, and this and that. You’re still 6’8, you’re still kinda slow. You still move at your own pace. But I would put Luka down as MVP this year.”
Quotes published with permission from The Action Network.
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