There’s a lot happening right now in the NBA calendar. The regular season is nearly halfway done, the trade deadline is less than a month away and shortly after that, All-Star Weekend will take place in Los Angeles. One player who will definitely be there is Luka Doncic, and deservedly so.
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Luka leads the league in scoring with 33.7 points per game, and he has a sizable lead over last year’s scoring champ, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He’s also fourth in assists with 8.8 per game, and his 8.0 rebounds is tied for second among guards.
Luka also led all players in All-Star votes after the first round of ballots were tabulated, and he’s still ahead now after Round 2, a sign of just how loved and respected he is around the league. After last night’s loss to the Spurs (one he can hardly be blamed for since he dropped a 38-point triple-double but got little help from his teammates), he was asked about the honor, and here’s what he had to say.
“It’s the first time that happened to me,. Honestly, it’s pretty amazing. A kid from Slovenia, just can only dream about that. I dreamt about being in the NBA. It’s pretty amazing. I really appreciate all the votes. It definitely hit me. It’s amazing,” the Lakers star said.
It can be easy to forget where these players come from sometimes, but Luka’s quote here is a great reminder. What we as fans see is a player with tremendous physical tools, a supremely high basketball IQ and a superlative competitiveness.
But for every jumper Luka knocks down though, for every time he powers through a defender and finishes at the rim, it all started with a kid and a dream.
Every NBA player is living out their dream to some extent, but Luka is living his best life even more than most. We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of the shocking trade that sent him from the Mavericks to the Lakers, but since that point he’s signed a supermax extension and become the face of the most famous team in basketball.
Luka still endures criticism of his defense, but he’s so unstoppable offensively that at this point it’s almost impossible to expect him to do any more than he is.
The Lakers’ defense is a team-wide issue, but they’re still 23-12 and currently tied for fourth in the Western Conference playoff picture. That’s a testament to Luka, because without him they’d be lottery-bound.
With this year’s new USA vs. the world All-Star format, it remains to be seen if many of the fans who voted Luka in are still so enthusiastic about his game as he’s giving the American team all it can handle.
