The Insufferable Brilliance of Luka Doncic: An Analysis of the NBA Superstar’s Behavior

It’s not so common to wonder whether the current best athlete in the world in his discipline is both as brilliant and dominant as he is insufferable. No, this is not a new 20 Minutes pamphlet devoted to Kylian Mbappé but a questioning of the behavior of Luka Doncic on the NBA floor. Let’s be clear: the Slovenian has undeniably just reached a milestone, at 25, by brilliantly reaching his first final with Dallas (match 2 will take place in Boston on the night of Sunday to Monday, at 2 a.m.).

Top scorer in the League (33.9 points per game in the regular season) and second best passer (9.8 assists), third in the MVP vote behind Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Mavericks leader even managed to stay afloat at TD Garden on Thursday, scoring 30 points, or a third of his team’s total, crushed in the opening (107-89). On the other hand, his incessant provocations, protests and attacks in the NBA tarnish the picture. Besides, has Luka Doncic always been classified among the bad kids of the basketball planet, including with Real Madrid (from 2015 to 2018), where he made a sensational professional debut?

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“From the NBA Draft, he was not respected”

“He already liked to turn towards his opponent and sneer when he scored a big shot,” remembers the former Belgian interior of Murcia Kevin Tumba, who faced him several times in Liga ACB. But he was still too young to act smart against experienced players, and Real is such a structure that he wouldn’t have allowed himself that. » Although winner of the 2018 Euroleague, MVP trophy to boot, teenager Luka would never have made a big splash during his reign in Europe?

“His behavior on the pitch could even suggest that he was shy,” confirms Jonathan Tabu, playmaker at Fuenlabrada then at Bilbao at that time. Luka Doncic was much less into trash-talking, but we felt that he already had in him the insolence of the greatest competitors. » This former Belgian international believes he has the major explanation for the change in temperament of “El Matador” upon his arrival on American soil in the summer of 2018.

“In Spain and in the Euroleague, everyone knew perfectly well what he was capable of doing. But from the NBA Draft, he was not respected. Guys like DeAndre Ayton and Marvin Bagley had been chosen before him, and there were direct doubts because he is European and not athletic enough according to many observers. The shift comes from there: this lack of respect towards him has developed a vengeful side in him. It pushes him to constantly demonstrate that he is stronger than everyone there, with the bad character we see in him. I think he needed to do this to establish himself like he did in the NBA. »

Here is a barely adult Luka Doncic in the Real Madrid jersey, during the 2017 Euroleague Final Four in Istanbul. – Lefteris Pitarakis/AP/SIPA

“He can really be annoying.”

With a guilty pleasure: tormenting the interior players who are supposed to bother him more with their stature. Jonathan Tabu explains: “He takes great pleasure, when there is a defensive switch and he finds himself facing a pivot, to pass on the message: “Put me whoever you want, it doesn’t change anything”. He uses this state of mind to stay at the top.” The native of Kinshasa had the “pleasure” of finding a Luka Doncic transformed by his NBA years during a long-close Belgium-Slovenia (72-88) during Eurobasket 2022.

And there, it was his special relationship with refereeing that stood out to him. “He has his own way of always putting pressure on the referees and he can really be annoying,” continues Jonathan Tabu. He puts 35 pawns on you, he gets plenty of free throws but he complains about every whistle. He’s actually making fun of the world? At one point, I asked him to stop that and just think about playing basketball. Sometimes this can work against him, especially when he is pushed around. It happens more in Fiba competitions, where we don’t get to watch him do it and be sparring partners like we sometimes seem to see in the NBA. »

78 technical fouls in just six seasons

Kevin Tumba, who has just signed with Antwerp, even remembers having given the diabolical Slovenian an “unintentional” elbow during this Belgium-Slovenia in 2022, sanctioned “unfairly” for an unsportsmanlike foul. “Doncic is very intelligent in knowing how to influence a match by talking to the referees, especially in the NBA where the game has long protected offensive talents,” confides the strong 33-year-old interior. And even during this Euro, the referees allowed themselves to be influenced by his status as reigning European champion. It really irritated me, especially since we saw afterwards against Poland that the refereeing no longer let itself be taken in by all its cinema. »

This is how Luka Doncic broke away for good, four days after the qualifier against Belgium, by being eliminated from the Euro in the quarter-finals by modest Poland (87-90), with his expulsion as a final twist. for five fouls three minutes from the end. Rebelote with his selection last year during his quarter against Canada at the World Cup (89-100), with a second fatal technical foul collected (34th). Proof that his attitude regularly goes beyond the limits, as during his bloody “You can’t defend on me, motherfucker” thrown in the face of our Rudy Gobert, after having scored the winning basket on his head during match 2 of these NBA play-offs in Minneapolis (108-109).

Is that a good situation, victim of Luka Doncic, Rudy? – David Berding / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

Kevin Tumba remembers that “little insults in Spanish flew” between them during this Belgium-Slovenia two years ago: “He uses it as a little mental trigger, he feeds off it like Kevin did Garnett, and he needs to taunt his opponents to perform well.” The kind of guys you can quickly start to hate, as long as you’re addicted to an NBA franchise other than the Mavs, or by chance French, with a dispute closely resembling that with the Spaniard Rudy Fernandez on the international scene. Here are six illustrations to validate the Slovenian’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame of the League’s tough basketball players, alongside for example Joel Embiid and Draymond Green.

• He has picked up 78 technical fouls in just six seasons, including the highest total this year (15). Unheard of for an NBA superstar, and numbers in line with hotheads like Rasheed Wallace, DeMarcus Cousins ​​and Draymond Green (the only one who has done “better” since 2018 with 88 techniques).
• He regularly makes a gesture with his fingers insinuating that the referees are corrupt.
• During the conference final against Minnesota, he offered a riotous festival, laughing alongside local star Anthony Edwards, insulting Rudy Gobert, and blithely mocking the Wolves fans in the front rows, which in passing makes Snoop Dogg himself laugh.
• After a decisive success in Sacramento in March in the race for the play-offs, he spent his time pointing the finger at former Kings general manager Vlade Divac, repeating in his direction “He should have drafted me”. He has a stubborn grudge, Luka.
• He created a hyper-entertaining rivalry with Suns star shooter Devin Booker. “Just, next time, don’t wait until there are three seconds left to speak,” he told her after a confrontation last year.
• He had a spectator expelled from the Dallas venue in January for saying “Luka, get your ass on a treadmill!” », all while wearing a Suns jersey… flocked with Devin Booker.

“It’s crazy to see him going two hours an hour and smiling”

How on earth can you keep calm in the face of so much insolence? “Personally, when he teased me at the Euro, it made me laugh,” says Jonathan Tabu. We’ve all played on playgrounds, where people talk all the time. For me, it remains good-natured, there is a little animosity and we respond to each other on the pitch. » On the “animosity” side, we are served with our fellow from Ljubljana. To assess this GOAT potential of chambering, we had to interview Bastien Fontanieu, publishing director of the aptly named basketball site TrashTalk.

“He’s a great trash-talker, but to enter the pantheon, you have to both win and win titles, like Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, which validates words with actions. Luka is above all a competitor who likes to put on a show, who is less into getting into it than the Americans in that regard. He’s not going to make fun of you anymore. It’s crazy to see him go 2 miles an hour, humiliate a professional athlete and smile. And then he’s a walking grenade, a very bad loser who relapsed into unbelievable behavior against OKC in the play-offs. »

Understand his obsession with whistles, and his propensity to expend crazy energy in this area. With a subtlety that Bastien from TrashTalk highlights: “He knows perfectly well an unofficial rule in the NBA: when a star receives a technical foul, the referees never take the responsibility of expelling him for a second technical afterwards. So Luka takes the opportunity to push the envelope as far as possible.” Ah that, we can trust him on this register. “It’s when I’m having fun that I play the best,” the person regularly reminds us, without us knowing to what extent excesses are part of Doncic entertainment.

Our file on the NBA

The now ex-Belgian international Jonathan Tabu (38 years old) wants to clarify: “When you see him on the pitch, you can say to yourself that he’s an asshole. But apart from that, I assure you he’s a great guy. Every year he wants to send a signed jersey to the Play 4 Africa association that I chair in Congo.” Equally fascinated by the character, Kevin Tumba concludes: “No matter his character, he is now in the NBA finals while being the best scorer in the League, so we can just shut up and admire”. Not sure that the Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum gang is on this line. As for us, we would almost cross our fingers to see Slovenia lose their teeth against Croatia or Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Greece in a month, during the Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) in Athens. After all, it would be stupid to have to hate the great Luka (again) at the Paris 2024 Olympics, right?

2024-06-09 10:29:21
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