All Things Luka Doncic

[Wildlinger]

Harden got hated on by the media mercilessly that year. Hate != bad. Harden wasn't a plus defender, but he was not nearly as bad as the media/reddit/realgm/twitter made him out to be.

Hate also cost Harden an MVP in 2017

Yeah... sure. I agree, there was a lot of hate around Harden. A lot of it unsubstantiated. But haters had something concrete to latch onto with Hardens defense, or lack thereof. Those blow bys look very bad on camera. Casspi’s today sure did… for Doncic that is.

[XTraderXL]

@Wildlinger
Now you are just blatantly making things up. Where did Casspi blow by him today? There was 1 time that he scored on him on a drive and Doncic actually stayed with him almost up to the basket where he was expecting a big to rotate and come help so that wasnt completely his fault, it was a very bad team defense sequence. Plenty of NBA level defenders would get scored on by Casspi in that situation. That was the only play that resembled a blow by.
Casspi second basket was a clear travel. Luka was closing him out, Casspi drove the ball, stopped with Doncic still on him and then he turned around, clearly moved his pivot foot, took one more step and made the shot. That basket shouldnt even count .
Doncic got caught on the screen one time on a set play so that wasnt a blow by either. So please tell me where you saw all the blow bys you are talking about? I can provide you Casspi highlights and you can tell me exactly when any of this actually happened.

I am not saying he was great on defense but you are basically fabricating what really happened. I suggest you take another look at how it really went down.

[Wildlinger]

Where did Casspi blow by him today?

First or second quarter. First most likely. Doncic was slow on a close out, Casspi got a step on him and blew by for an uncontested dunk. That was the one that stuck in my mind the most. I'd love to see the highlights and we can discuss it further.

[Wildlinger]

Yeah....he's going to "easily" do something that all the greatest EuroLeague players didn't do......he's "easily" going to do what

Sabonis
Bodiroga
Spanoulis
Papaloukas
Navarro
Diamantidis
Jasikevicius
Ginobili
Teodosic
Llull

etc., etc., etc. he is going to "easily" do what none of them could do.....

He's got the potential to be immensely better than all of those players... so, yeah. If he stays in Europe and plays in a top 3 Euroleague team built around him, he could win multiple MVP titles. Maybe easily was a bit hyperbolic on my part, cause we all know what Zaza said: Nothing easy!

[Bob8]

Harden got hated on by the media mercilessly that year. Hate != bad. Harden wasn't a plus defender, but he was not nearly as bad as the media/reddit/realgm/twitter made him out to be.

Hate also cost Harden an MVP in 2017

Yeah... sure. I agree, there was a lot of hate around Harden. A lot of it unsubstantiated. But haters had something concrete to latch onto with Hardens defense, or lack thereof. Those blow bys look very bad on camera. Casspi’s today sure did… for Doncic that is.

I would even believe that you haven't double standards, if you had only once mentioned how he was shooting 3s today or against Croatia. They were many from around 8 meters and pull-up jumpers. It looks to me he has no problem with Nba range. If his defense counts than this 3s should count too. I just wonder what kind of conversation would we had, If Dragic was shooting 3s over 50% and Doncic 12%? I believe he would have been tear apart. And now we're talking only how he was blown away 2 times by Casspi. What about some nice plays in open court or attacking the rim? No. Only defense on Casspi counts. And last question, what is Dragic doing with his shooting? Friendly games or not, 3/24, this is becoming very embarrassing for a Nba veteran.

[XTraderXL]

That one was in the first quarter. He didnt get really blown by, Casspi might not even score if help defense came over. But ok, lets say you are right on that one. But that was the only play that he got blown by. The whole right side of he court was open, Casspi had iso and 90% of players would get beaten in that situation. It was a perfect position for Casspi to drive to the basket, it doesnt get better than this.

I dont know how to post a video here. You can find it here https://twitter.com/IAmDPick. Just scroll down a bit. Its every possession that Doncic was on Casspi on defense.

[Wildlinger]

double post... my bad

[XTraderXL]

As far as his shooting goes, most of his threes come from NBA 3 range so he will be just fine. Seems like every three he shoots he is at least a foot behind the line. Its not rare that he shoots from 25-27 feet and is just as efficient as from 23-24 feet. His step back is killer and that should give him some nice looks in the NBA. I just hope he develops his midrange pull up, that would be his bread and butter on offense. He would be unstoppable there.

[Wildlinger]

Now you are just blatantly making things up. Where did Casspi blow by him today?

That one was in the first quarter. He didn't get really blown by, Casspi might not even score if help defense came over.

Oh, so you remembered the play. You accused me of "blatantly making things up" after all. Overreact much? Don't worry, I'm already used to hyperbole by some Doncic fans. No biggie.

Here's the video. The very first play. It pretty much showed exactly what I said. And when watching just remember that Casspi who plays mostly as a stretch 4 never blew by anybody in the NBA, ever. The very next play shows extremely slow lateral adjustment by Doncic. Dude, that video doesn't do Doncic any favors defensively.

Read on Twitter

[XTraderXL]

Its one play and I wouldnt even call it a blow by. Blow by for me is when a defnsive player cant even stay with his player. This was not the case here, Doncic was with him almost up until the basket. Casspi would most likely have to kick the ball out if help defense was there as its supposed to be. As I said, Casspi was in a perfect position for this kind of play, you dont get a better situation for a drive than this so its not surprising he scored especially when there was no help.

In any case, my beef was when you were saying that he got blown by repeatedly. So show me where it happened. Per your definition of a blow by it happened once in the whole game and Doncic was guarding Casspi a lot.

The next play? Casspi attacked the closeout, he had to stop as he had nowhere to go and then had to travel to score. What in the world are you talking about?

If you want to see what a real blow by looks like, go back 11 months and check out the game between Real Madrid and OKC. What Doncic did to Oladipo, that was a clean blow by

[Wildlinger]

Its one play and I wouldnt even call it a blow by.

In just a minute of this video you can actually see numerous bad defensive possessions by Doncic. There's a lot of stuff you can't see as well. He was late a lot on switches and forgot to box out a few times, though I might have attributed one Gal Mekel blow by to Casspi, who was abusing Doncic all game long. To be fair, Doncic did his fair share of abusing as well and the video shows that. But the video also shows more than a fair share of bad defensive possessions. And sure, he is just an 18 year old kid. There’s no need to debate this any further. Anybody can watch the video and judge for themselves.

[agentofatlas]

Its one play and I wouldnt even call it a blow by. Blow by for me is when a defnsive player cant even stay with his player. This was not the case here, Doncic was with him almost up until the basket. Casspi would most likely have to kick the ball out if help defense was there as its supposed to be. As I said, Casspi was in a perfect position for this kind of play, you dont get a better situation for a drive than this so its not surprising he scored especially when there was no help.

In any case, my beef was when you were saying that he got blown by repeatedly. So show me where it happened. Per your definition of a blow by it happened once in the whole game and Doncic was guarding Casspi a lot.

The next play? Casspi attacked the closeout, he had to stop as he had nowhere to go and then had to travel to score. What in the world are you talking about?

If you want to see what a real blow by looks like, go back 11 months and check out the game between Real Madrid and OKC. What Doncic did to Oladipo, that was a clean blow by

The first play of the clip was definitely a blow-by. Casspi didn't even fake, he just gathered for the longest time and drove past for the dunk lol.

Anyways position wise Doncic is definitely a point forward. Might settle in the 3 slot as you are what you guard in the NBA. Hopefully he can get strong enough to guard 4s as well.

[XTraderXL]

Its one play and I wouldnt even call it a blow by.

In just a minute of this video you can actually see numerous bad defensive possessions by Doncic. There's a lot of stuff you can't see as well. He was late a lot on switches and forgot to box out a few times, though I might have attributed one Gal Mekel blow by to Casspi, who was abusing Doncic all game long. To be fair, Doncic did his fair share of abusing as well and the video shows that. But the video also shows more than a fair share of bad defensive possessions. And sure, he is just an 18 year old kid. There’s no need to debate this any further. Anybody can watch the video and judge for themselves.

Now you are changing the narrative. We were talking about blow bys, not how he played defensively overall. And the blow by was just one. Anyway, he is way better on defense than you think he is. Right now he is clearly not playing at 100% defensively. Again, go watch the last 5 min or so of the game against Croatia and how he can play defense if he really applies.

He was also better defensivelly last year in Madrid than he is in the NT so I think this has a lot to do with the coach. Slovenian coach is Igor Kokoskov who is an assistant coach at Utah Jazz. I think he gave Luka the leading role on offense so his defense is suffering. This is what all NBA teams do so I believe its the same with Doncic. He just doesnt have to play defense at full strength as he is so good on offense, he easily offsets the minuses on defense. Slovenia lost the game by five and Doncic had a positive +/- and he was the one who actually brought them back into the game in the second half after a 20p half time deficit. He will be fine, he is too good and too smart to not figure out how to be excellent in the NBA. I am not worried about him at all.

[SportsGuy8]

This same Wildlinger said how this games are meaningless.

Nah, I didn’t say that. I just said they don’t matter when we’re assessing the shooting abilities of a 31 year old NBA veteran, who just finished yet another season averaging over 20 points while his shot chart looked like this… not for a game, for the entire season.

You're making the same mistake as those who're convinced Doncic is now an elite shooter, just because he's shooting extremely well on a small sample.

His shooting most likely up-swinged during the last season. Let's take a look at seasons 14-15 and 15-16:


Everything's A LOT worse, not just a bit. Sure, his role is different, but even one full season is not nearly enough to kill variance. It's obviously much better than a few games, but still not nearly enough to truly draw any firm conclusions.

And just as Dragic's role in these 2 STRUGGLING seasons wasn't perfect for him, same can easily be said for Doncic, who similarly had to submit to Llull as Dragic had to Wade.

[SportsGuy8]

Can anyone get a good, non-potato quality, video of Doncic's nice coast-to-coast dunk?

Here's the potato quality one:

Read on Twitter

It's a very nice example that while he obviously isn't a great athlete, he's still getting quite underrated when it comes to athleticism.

[Bob8]

Can anyone get a good, non-potato quality, video of Doncic's nice coast-to-coast dunk?

Here's the potato quality one:

Read on Twitter

It's a very nice example that while he obviously isn't a great athlete, he's still getting quite underrated when it comes to athleticism.

I'm afraid it doesn't count, friendly game.

In this preparation games Doncic showed many things. First, he can score a lot if his role is different. In Real he was only backup for Llull, he played great but his scoring suffered. Now he's playing with Nba veteran, but with different role he showed he has no problems with scoring a lot. Second, he's shooting. It's not only his percentage, but how he's shooting. He looks really good, smooth, nice technique and is shooting mostly from Nba range and many times creates his shot by him self.
Now we can return to his blow by. He's the only player who was ever blow by.

[UcanUwill]

Every time he gets defensive rebound, he fast breaks on offense. Very effective. That running dribbling of his is very funny looking tho.

[kayath]

Every time he gets defensive rebound, he fast breaks on offense. Very effective. That running dribbling of his is very funny looking tho.

yeah when he does that he reminds me on Dragic every time. Its so hard to defend that while defense is not set up yet.

[UcanUwill]

Every time he gets defensive rebound, he fast breaks on offense. Very effective. That running dribbling of his is very funny looking tho.

yeah when he does that he reminds me on Dragic every time. Its so hard to defend that while defense is not set up yet.

Most of the time they intentionally foul him. When you watch him, it looks so easy, like why more players don't do it? Its a valuable skill.

[Wildlinger]

You're making the same mistake as those who're convinced Doncic is now an elite shooter, just because he's shooting extremely well on a small sample.

82 games is a small sample size? How about 82 more games?



You did exactly what you accused me of doing. You picked the 2 more or less worst Dragic's 3 point shooting seasons as a response, when he was shooting considerably worse than his first 6 seasons average in the league. You actually used a small sample size compared to his complete body of work. You were being completely disingenuous by posting shot charts from a season when Dragic's 3 point shooting was more than 5% worse than his career averages. Yet he still finished shooting over 50% from the field in one of those 2 seasons even after he got traded. That’s a small sample size compared to 7 seasons (6 to be more precise) of more or less solid 3 point shooting.

We’re not talking about a small sample size here. Dragic was in conversation for three point shooting contest this past season after all. He’s a good shooter and at this moment he’s clearly a better shooter than Doncic, which is in part how this thing got started. That’s just a fact and I won’t spend any more time on it. You already accused me of writing posts which could be “perceived as Doncic hate” simply because I try to be objective. The key word being objective.

Yesterday I got accused of “blatantly making things up” when I wrote exactly what happened in the game vs Israel. The exact indisputable fact was perceived as “blatantly making things up” by one Doncic fan. Blatantly! I was called a liar for being objective. This is an excellent example of what I’m talking about. Some Doncic fans are obviously not capable of objective, rational and calm debate about Doncic and always get overly emotional. That’s what got this thread shut down before.