Lakers star Luka Doncic
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There’s no way to know if the Mavericks will end up regretting trading Luka Doncic, but most signs currently point to that being the case. His fitness was cited as a factor that led to him being sent to Los Angeles, but the team may have overlooked a key detail based on what he had to say after undergoing a fairly dramatic physical transformation ahead of the upcoming season.
At this point, countless words have been spilled concerning the ramifications of the trade that resulted in the Mavericks shipping off the face of the franchise to the Lakers when Luka Doncic was dealt to Los Angeles in February, and most NBA fans are very familiar with the fallout that ensued.
The powers that be in Dallas had to know they were going to be greeted with a ton of backlash when they pulled the trigger, and there were predictably a number of reports citing unnamed members of the front office who pointed to concerns about his physique and conditioning in an attempt to justify the decision to move him.
It’s hard to believe the 26-year-old superstar didn’t use those comments as motivation while working to cultivate the noticeably slimmed-down figure he officially unveiled at the end of July, and all signs point to “Skinny Luka” hitting the court with a chip on his shoulder when his first full season with the Lakers gets underway.
Doncic is currently getting some extra reps in with the national team in his native Slovenia, and he shed some additional light on how he was able to shed those pounds while making the Mavericks look even more foolish than they already did in the process.
Luka Doncic pointed to his busy summer schedule in 2024 as a major reason he wasn’t able to train as hard as he did during the current offseason
Doncic was a major reason the Mavericks earned the right to compete against the Celtics in the NBA Finals in 2024—a series that wrapped up midway through June after Boston secured the championship in five games. Slovenia had also not earned a spot in the Summer Olympics at that point, and he only had a couple of weeks to prepare for the FIBA qualifying tournament where they ultimately failed to punch their ticket to Paris.
While Doncic did have some time to prepare for the start of training camp in October, it’s also hard to blame him for taking some time to unwind after a fairly grueling stretch of basketball.
The most recent one was slightly less taxing when you consider Doncic and the Lakers headed home for the season after the Timberwolves eliminated them in the first round of the playoffs at the end of April.
According to Ekipa, Doncic decided to put the month-and-a-half of free time he didn’t have the previous year to good use while discussing his ability to focus on his fitness, saying:
“I think I was a good player before, too. What drove me? Basically, we made a slightly different training plan. Well, I had a little more time.
Last summer was really tiring, I played until June, then the national team, so there was no energy. This year I had more time.”
Again, you could dismiss that explanation as a convenient excuse given the time Doncic had to work with after Slovenia failed to qualify for the Olympics (and that argument obviously would have been even firmer if they’d qualified), and it is worth noting his last season with the Mavericks wasn’t the first time his conditioning had been flagged as sa potential issue.
With that said, his decision to paint himself as a “good player before” is certainly quite the understatement, and while it’s hard to predict how things would have panned out if he’d remained in Dallas, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to suggest he could have addressed his fitness in a similar manner if he’d remained there.