Dončić and Brunson take Week 3 honors after big scoring stretches

Luka Dončić’s latest weekly award came with a simple backdrop: every game he played during the period ended in a Lakers win. The NBA named Dončić the Western Conference Player of the Week for Nov. 2-8, while Jalen Brunson earned the Eastern Conference honor as both guards helped set the tone for their teams in Week 3 of the 2026-27 season.

Dončić’s case was built on volume and efficiency across three appearances. He averaged 45.0 points, 7.0 rebounds and 8.3 assists while shooting 52.5% from the field, 39.5% from 3-point range and 82.9% from the foul line, and he scored at least 40 points in each game. Los Angeles won all three, which gave the week a cleaner result than a typical scoring binge and tied the individual production to a team run that moved the Lakers to 9-2.

The week opened with a 42-point, 13-assist performance in a 138-117 home win over Miami. Dončić followed with 40 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in a 116-103 road victory over Sacramento, then closed with 53 points, five rebounds and five assists in a 124-118 NBA Cup win over Portland. That final game was his season high and gave him four straight games of 40 or more points, a Lakers streak not reached since Kobe Bryant in January 2012.

The honor also pushed Dončić’s career totals into sharper focus. The Lakers said it was his fifth Player of the Week award as a Laker and the 20th of his career. That is a significant marker, but it is also separate from any claim about streaks or repeat seasons: it is a cumulative total, not a run of consecutive weekly wins. The distinction matters because the award sheet itself reflects one strong week, not a larger guarantee about the next one.

Brunson’s week was less explosive on the scoreboard but still strong enough to separate him from the Eastern Conference field. The Knicks guard averaged 27.7 points, 3.3 rebounds and 6.3 assists, and NBA.com’s awards story listed him as the East winner for the same Nov. 2-8 window. New York finished the week 5-4 overall, so the award did not come with the same team surge attached to Dončić’s case, but Brunson’s production still gave the Knicks a reliable offensive anchor during the stretch.

That contrast is the cleanest way to read Week 3. Dončić paired overwhelming scoring with an unbeaten week for Los Angeles, while Brunson earned the conference nod without the same team record to lean on. The awards story did not rely on a single headline game for Brunson; it reflected a week’s worth of steady output in the scoring and playmaking columns.

The league also had a full nominee field on both sides, which reinforces how competitive these weekly awards can be even when the winners post obvious numbers. In the West, the other nominees included Deni Avdija, LaMelo Ball, Stephen Curry, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Austin Reaves and Victor Wembanyama. In the East, the list included Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Klay Thompson, Jaylen Brown and Karl-Anthony Towns.

For now, the verified change is straightforward: Dončić and Brunson own the Week 3 conference honors, and Dončić’s three-game run helped keep the Lakers rolling into the early part of the season. The next concrete checkpoint is what each guard does in the following week, when the awards cycle starts over again.