Luka Doncic drew plenty of praise for his body transformation this past summer, turning into a more chiseled version of himself that could play at an elite level for longer periods of time.
The added muscle and improvements in endurance have helped Doncic lead the NBA in scoring midway through the 2025-26 season. Doncic’s ability to score the basketball is the primary reason why the Los Angeles Lakers remain in the playoff hunt, but the defense remains a work in progress.
Although Luka is quicker and more agile on the court, he’s still largely a defensive liability because of his lack of burst and explosiveness. Far too often, Doncic is unable to keep his opponent in front which then comprises the rest of Los Angeles’ defense.
However, head coach JJ Redick came away impressed with how well Doncic held up defensively in the fourth quarter against the Dallas Mavericks. The Lakers wound up coming back to win 110-106 and Redick credited the superstar for coming up with multiple stops in crunch time, via Dave McMenamin of ESPN:
“We counted after the game, he had six straight stops where they targeted him,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said of Doncic. “Just a fantastic job from him. Then [he] makes the game-sealing defensive play with the charge on [Naji] Marshall.”
Opposing teams forcing Doncic to play defense isn’t new as they’ll routinely call for pick and rolls to try and get him on their best perimeter players. In Dallas’ case, they tried to trigger switches to get Doncic to guard players like Cooper Flagg who had burned him previously in the game.
Doncic seemed to take the challenges personally as he moved his feet and stayed disruptive with his hands, allowing the Lakers to slowly climb back in the fourth. When Luka is that engaged defensively, it gives Los Angeles a much wider margin to work with as they’re usually depending on his scoring to bail them out.
It’s unfair to expect Doncic to be sustain that level of defense for the entirety of games given how much of the offensive load he bears, but in crunch time moments it’s necessary. Los Angeles continues their road trip on Monday against the Chicago Bulls and they’ll need Doncic to show up again defensively to keep the momentum going.
Luka Doncic was excited to go home to play against Mavericks
Doncic has processed his abrupt exit from Dallas, so now coming back to play his former team shouldn’t weight as heavily. In fact, this time around Doncic was excited to go home to play against the Mavericks.
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