Yes, media narratives cause people to hate all sorts of shit they shouldn't hate, from sports to politics and well beyond. That doesn't mean that defiance of one's own eyeballs is justifiable, lol.

He did 29-9-9 as a 21 year old and dragged his team, by himself, to a 7 seed. And most outlets pegged the Mavs as a team likely to improve in 2020-21, so considering he finished 4th in MVP voting in 2020, and people thought his team was going to finish better than it did in 2020 (and it did, fwiw)? Luka is a reasonable name to put in your top 5 favorites going into 2020-21. In fact, your list would kind of be crazy if it *didn't* have Luka on it, considering the context.

So if a quarter to a third of every sports outlet's team of NBA writers want to pick Luka as their preseason favorite... I think that's pretty damn reasonable given the context, lol. If 100% of writers picked Luka, that'd be one thing, okay, that'd be weird... but that wasn't the case preseason on ESPN (36%), The Ringer (25%), Sports Illustrated (25%), NY Times (33%), and so forth. The NBA GMs didn't pick Luka-- they predicted Giannis to win a third straight. Even Vegas betting markets had Giannis as the favorite preseason, not Luka. (I can post links to all of these if you want, but if you just Google "NBA MVP preseason prediction" with the name of an outlet, they're easy links to find. Here's the preseason Vegas numbers link: https://www.actionnetwork.com/nba/nba-mvp-betting-odds-giannis-antetokounmpo-luka-doncic-lebron-james-step-curry-2021)

And even if the media predicted some outlandish shit-- as they're capable of doing, especially on ESPN!-- we can always just... change the channel and enjoy the beautiful basketball being played. Lord knows I started enjoying sports far more once I stopped watching ESPN talking heads shows and started watching basketball games on mute (a few announcers notwithstanding). Wade out into the water now and again in order to find a few writers you trust, read them, and toss the rest of the noise into the dumpster.