Meet Luka Doncic, The Best Player in the 2018 NBA Draft And Still Underrated
This was an extremely strong NBA Draft class, at least as far as prospects go. You can never quite predict which blokes will come good on the expectations and which will Anthony Bennett everything up but that’s the draft for you. All the scouting in the world and it’s still just a big ol’ roll of the dice.
Of course, it’s pretty easy to roll the dice on a seven footer who rebounds as easy as he breathes and who possesses ball skills that would make a guard blush. The Phoenix Suns sure had no problem doing that with DeAndre Ayton, cashing him out for their number one overall pick. Same goes for the Sacramento Kings grabbing their new buddy Marvin Bagley III. When you’ve got a lad who can score that comfortably, who can mop up the offensive boards with the flick of a wrist… mate, what are you even waiting for?
Or how about the Memphis Grizzlies going all in on Jaren Jackson Jr, a rookie who might already have the ability to guard every position on the court. Gotta love some of that, especially in the defensive cauldron that is Memphis. Mo Bamba’s got wingspan enough that he can almost shake hands with fans on both sides of the court at once without them having to leave their seats. You can’t teach size, as they say. Collin Sexton could be a firecracker of a point guard. Michael Porter Jr’s perceived physical frailty saw him drop down to fourteenth but when you can score in as many ways as him you’ll probably be sweet. And how can we forget Trae Young!? The guy who might be Russell Westbrook 2.0 with his pull-up daggers, rapid energy and killer passing… and also his sketchy defence but we’ll keep it on the positive.
Heaps of great talent there and something to fit every need. But the story of the draft was the Dallas Mavericks trading up with the Atlanta Hawks to get their mitts on Luka Doncic. 19 years old from Slovenia, coming off a season with Real Madrid which saw him crowned a EuroLeague champion and MVP of the EL Final Four. He won the EuroBasket championship with Slovenia and was MVP of the tournament. He just put up per-36 numbers of 20.9 points, 7.5 rebounds and 6.6 assists while shooting 45.6% from the field. And this ain’t college basketball either, this is a teenaged prodigy doing this against grown-ass men in the second best league on the planet. He’s 6’8 with NBA size and a history of clutch shooting… the bloke was born for this stage.
Taking that into stock, there’s a pretty decent argument that Doncic should have gone number one, which is where he was projected up until the last couple months. And yet not only did he slide to three but the team that picked third traded down to get a player in Trae Young who, according to a fair few pundits, had a chance to slip out of the top half dozen altogether. No player in this draft has gotten the hype or excitement of Luka Doncic. No player is objectively better than Luka Doncic either. Yet three teams shrugged their shoulders and passed on him?
Meanwhile in came the Dallas Mavericks with the swoop and, while it cost them next year’s first round pick, ask a Mavs fan if they give a damn. Because they don’t. This is an absolute steal for Dallas, who came in with the fifth pick and left with their new franchise cornerstone. (Although funny story because the Mavs had the third best odds going into the lottery but slipped down to fifth, meaning those ping pong balls effectively cost them their 2019 first round pick).
Which makes you wonder… what’s up with Doncic that he slipped down the ladder? If you check up with the experts then they’ll tell you that Doncic fell because of concerns about his athleticism. Also his defence is far from the polished product that his offensive game already is, plus he’s a little temperamental (although find a young player that isn’t). Odd things to get hung up on when the guy’s been playing against better, bigger and older players than the college grads. Then again, doesn’t it feel like these are the things that NBA scouts say about European players every single time?
It’s understandable why it happens. Players who do their thing in the European Leagues aren’t as accessible to NBA scouts as the college lads are. It’s much better than it was in the old days but they’re still, to a degree, unknown prospects. There’s not as much opportunity to fall in love with them unless you love the mystery but with so much at stake with these picks it’s pretty important to make the most fully-informed decision possible.
Plus no matter how many Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kristaps Porzingis, Nikola Jokic, Rudy Gobert, Dennis Schroder or Clint Capela type players keep emerging… there’s always the long dark shadow of Darko Milicic hanging over European players.
Of course, not every team is looking for a playmaking wing. The Phoenix Suns, who already have Devin Booker, could obviously use a franchise centre like Ayton a little more. That’s just fit, mate. Can’t really argue with it.
However the Sacramento Kings and Atlanta Hawks don’t get off the hook so easily. You’d have thought that with Vlade Divac and Peja Stojakovic involved the Kings would be all over the most polished European prospect to hit the draft possibly ever. Or the Atlanta Hawks with their Mike Budenholzer offence looking like a comfortable fit for a EuroLeague import. Nothing against Marvin Bagley or Trae Young, it’s just that Doncic is better right now and that’s not even a debate.
Then again… most teams with top picks aren’t expecting to go from the lottery to the finals in one year. They’re already crap so they have time to develop, which means that ‘right now’ isn’t always the priority. And Doncic might be the better current player but if he doesn’t learn the defence, if his three-point shot doesn’t get up there, if his athleticism affects his NBA adaptation then five years down the line Ayton and Bagley might have long since passed by him. It could happen.
Then there’s the fact that Doncic was, for a long time, noncommittal about declaring for the draft. First he wanted to finish his Real Madrid season, then he wanted to celebrate with them for a while before deciding anything. That’s gotta have an effect as well and it might even have been deliberate in order to manipulate things from Doncic’s end, looking for the best situation for him. Or he could always stay in Europe, never not an option for him under contract with Real Madrid.
And then this line might’ve upset a few franchises too, you never know…
Those are the excuses, anyway. The real reason that Doncic didn’t get the reaction from team executives that he’s gotten with fans and media is because he’s European. Take the exact same player, same size and skillset, but make him American and an alum of Duke or Kentucky or whatever and he’s going number one without a doubt.
Step in Donnie Nelson, the President of Basketball Operations for the Dallas Mavericks and one of a handful of NBA figureheads with a great record of identifying and trusting foreign talent (top of that list being Gregg Popovich). His dad drafted Dirk Nowitzki back in the day and Don Jr advocated pretty hard for Giannis a couple years ago - only for the Mark Cuban to nix him and trade down and get Shane Larkin, whoops – but Cubes wasn’t falling for that one twice when Nelson went all in on Doncic. They made it happen.
Mavs Head Coach Rick Carlisle: “We’re very fortunate. Luka Doncic was the guy that we targeted to get in this draft if there was any way possible to do it. At one point we thought that there might be a slight chance he could fall to us. But then a couple of days ago it was pretty clear that there was no way that that was going to happen. He’s just too good, and so we made this deal — we moved up.”
The fact they traded up means that they were convinced Memphis would otherwise have taken Doncic at four. That’d be the same Memphis team whose star player is Spaniard Marc Gasol, going up against German Dirk Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks. All that’s missing was the San Antonio Spurs leaping into the conversation.
Building a team in the NBA is a tricky business. Contrary to common belief, there are no bad GMs in the NBA. You cannot get to that level without immense talent for all things basketball. There are, though, varying degrees of gamblers and there are varying degrees of bad decisions. Billy King’s Paul Pierce trade as Brooklyn Nets GM kinda ruined his entire reputation and his old team still hasn’t recovered. It’s all about exploiting the inefficiencies out there and one such inefficiency is the underrating of foreign talent which allows for a marginal slip down the ladder from a guy like Luka Doncic, opening the door for a team like Dallas to step in and reinvigorate their entire franchise at a time when they really, truly bloody needed it.
As for the Kings and Hawks, there’ll be no dramas as long as Bagley and Young turn out alright. So better hope they turn out alright then.
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