nate33 wrote:Meanwhile, Doncic is the prototype playmaking wing that has been the focal point of nearly every champion in the modern era, whether it's Bird, Magic, Jordan, Kobe, Wade, Lebron, Durant, or Kawhi. If you don't have one of those guys, you better have a transcendent top 10 All-Time center like Hakeem or Duncan or you're not winning. Playmaking wings allow you to play bigger defenders at the PG position, eliminating the weakest point in the defense.
I'd take Doncic over Trae ten times out of ten.
I don't think Doncic is that kind of prototype, though. His defense isn't up to par as far as I can tell and I'm not optimistic that ever changes. He has more in common with Nikola Jokic than Lebron or Kawhi on the defensive side of things and Jokic is honestly better defensively. Dirk did win a championship, though. Luka has a long way to go defensively to catch Dirk, who was a sneaky good defender, but it's also proof that you don't need to be Lebron or Kawhi on defense to make things work.
In my view, neither Luka nor Trae fit that prototype. I tend to think that when we're dealing with a sample size of less than 100, though, that "prototypes" tend to be misleading. Really, it just comes down to someone being really, really good at basketball. Jerry West also won a championship as a diminutive guard. He always seems to get left out of these discussions. Prototypes aren't prototypes until they happen and then they are. It's less likely that a diminutive guard is going to be really, really good at basketball which limits the sample size a bit but at the same time, once you've already established that player as being pretty damn good, that qualification is out the window. I think a team could win a title with either Luka or Trae once they both hit their primes. It all comes down to how good the supporting cast would need to be.
