Luka Dončić exploded for 53 points Friday night, stretching his run to seven straight games of at least 37, as the Los Angeles Lakers held off the Portland Trail Blazers 124-118 in an NBA Cup game at home.

The surge has left teammate Austin Reaves and coach JJ Redick short on words to describe what is, by all accounts, a phenomenal stretch of basketball.

Luka Dončić’s 7-Game Scoring Run Puts Him in Rare Company

The Lakers star shot 17-of-33 from the field and 14-of-18 at the line, adding 5 rebounds and 5 assists in 38 minutes, with his jumper in the lane in the final minute helping Los Angeles close out a fourth straight win.

The seven-game stretch opened with a 52-point night in a road win over the Utah Jazz. Dončić followed with 41, 37, 45, 42, and 40 before Friday’s 53. That gives him 310 points over those seven games, an average of 44.3 per game.

Hoop Central laid out all seven stat lines, from the 52 in Utah to Friday’s 53, and closed with a simple verdict: “We are witnessing greatness.”

Elgin Baylor, Kobe Bryant, and George Mikan were the only Lakers before him to score 40 or more in four consecutive regular-season games.

Friday also marked the 11th 50-point game of his career (tied with Allen Iverson for the 10th-most in NBA history) and his fourth as a Laker.

Dončić filled the rest of the box score, too. After the November 4 win over the Sacramento Kings, he became the first player in league history with six straight games of at least 35 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, and 5 made 3-pointers.

Reaves, who scored 25 points Friday and combined with Dončić for 10 points in the final seconds to hold off Portland, had as close a look at the run as anyone.

“I mean, you don’t have words for it. Obviously, everybody knows he’s talented and one of the best offensive players to ever touch a basketball. But the stuff he’s doing is insane,” Reaves said. “You look up and he has 40, and he feels like he’s only got 25. It seems normal now, and that’s not normal.”

One fan was just as floored, writing, “I have no words about what I’m witnessing from Luka Dončić right now.”

Redick has run into the same wall. He was asked whether he was running out of superlatives to describe Dončić. “Sure. I’m gonna just sit around and … come up with more superlatives so I have more words ready. But for now, I don’t have any words.”

Redick also measured this run against Dončić’s past after the Nov. 4 win in Sacramento, when his season was six games old, weighing where it ranked among the hottest stretches he had seen from the Lakers star: “This and March. The entire month of March last year.”

In 16 games that March, Dončić averaged 37.5 points.

Friday’s win left the Lakers 8-2 and first in the West. Dončić’s next chance to extend the run comes Sunday, when Los Angeles visits the Detroit Pistons at Little Caesars Arena.