The NBA season doesn’t tip off for another two months, but basketball fans will have plenty to dig into before then. The EuroBasket tournament is set to begin in a couple of days, and it features some of the best players in the world.
Advertisement
Nikola Jokic will be in attendance, representing his native Serbia. Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has had an eventful summer in terms of speculation about his future with the Milwaukee Bucks, will be trying to lead Greece to glory.
Luka Doncic signed a three-year, $165 million max extension with the Lakers earlier this month, and he’s gotten plenty of preseason MVP buzz following his new fitness regimen that has seen him lose over 30 pounds. As an 18-year-old in 2017, he helped Slovenia win its first ever EuroBasket title. Now that he’s one of the game’s preeminent players, perhaps history will repeat itself.
Slovenia beat Serbia for the title in 2017, but that Serbian team didn’t have Jokic on it. With the three-time MVP in the fold, Serbia is the favorite to win the whole thing this time around.
The Serbians nearly beat Team USA in the 2024 Paris Olympics before ultimately settling for the bronze medal. Jokic was his typical unstoppable self, but he was also helped by the fearless shooting of Bogdan Bogdanovic. Bogi sat down with Eurohoops this week to talk about some of the toughest roadblocks in Serbia’s path as the Baltic nation goes for its first EuroBasket title, and he singled out Luka and Giannis.
On Luka, Bogdanovic said, “He can kill anyone in the tournament. He can go for 50, 60, I don’t know, that’s what makes him special.” Luka scored 47 against France in 2022, the second-highest total in EuroBasket history, but what’s likely weighing on Bogdanovic’s mind is when Luka dropped 73 on his Hawks in January of 2024.
The Greek Freak recently went on a tour of McLaren’s facilities to see Lando Norris and the company’s record-breaking Formula 1 cars, and like those finely-tuned machines, Bogdanovic sees Giannis as an impediment that will be difficult to get around.
“I feel like when you play against him, his athleticism, you can’t make mistakes against him because he’s punishing it all the time,” Bogdanovic said. “His ability to play defense as well, it’s not easy to go around him. There are no easy shots with him.”
Luka was injured in a tune-up against Latvia 10 days ago when a player crashed into his knee. He suffered a contusion but is already back to full health, but his play has been up and down since. He scored 28 and pulled down 10 rebounds in a win over Great Britain three days after hurting his knee, but scored just 17 in a humiliating 34-point defeat to Serbia this past Thursday.
Luka was just 4-18 from the floor in that game, but he also didn’t get much help from his teammates as Serbia rolled to victory. That game dropped Slovenia to just 1-5 in their EuroBasket warmup games, prompting Luka to deliver a locker room speech after the game to try and bring the team together.
Slovenia hasn’t looked good, but Serbia would be wise not to take them lightly once the games really matter, because as Bogdanovic said, Luka is capable of going off at any time. Tune into Courtside 1891 to catch all the EuroBasket action beginning Thursday.
