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When the Dallas Mavericks shockingly shipped off superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, the initial spin was that Doncic just didn’t take good enough care of his body to win an NBA championship. Lakers head coach JJ Redick then added fuel to that fire after the Lakers were eliminated from the NBA playoffs. But now it appears Doncic is getting the message.
Redick did not address Doncic’s shape directly in his season-ending press conference. But he did state that not everyone on his team was in “championship shape” and that it needed to change if they wanted to make a deep postseason run.
“I’ll start with the offseason and the work that’s required in an offseason to be in championship shape,” Redick said when discussing how his team moves forward. “And we have a ways to go as a roster. And certainly, there are individuals that were in phenomenal shape. There’s certainly other ones that could have been in better shape. That’s where my mind goes immediately is we have to get in championship shape.”
Luka has seemingly lost 20-30lbs already this offseason, and is looking in great shape 👀 pic.twitter.com/pDtAnOjyeb
— Jake (@playoffjake) May 25, 2025
Slimmed Down Luka Doncic Turns Up To Watch Real Madrid Basketball Game
Doncic was spotted in Madrid over Memorial Day weekend attending a La Liga basketball game between Real Madrid and Granada. The 26-year-old Slovenian looked significantly smaller than he did when his NBA season ended.
Now, this isn’t the first time Doncic has looked like he’s improved his body composition. We get pictures and videos like this seemingly every offseason. But it is the first time his head coach has (fairly) directly called him out over his weight. So maybe Redick’s prompting was exactly the kick in the behind that he needed to figure things out.
For the sake of Lakers fans, they might want to hope that’s the case. Otherwise, Nico Harrison might come out of this whole thing looking way better than anybody first thought.