Why can't we appreciate Luka Dončić as he is?
The Lakers superstar has seemingly emerged as one of the league's most divisive players this season
Two seasons ago, as he averaged 33.9 points (61.7 percent true shooting), 9.8 assists, 9.2 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game, deeply entrenched in an MVP race with Nikola Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, before leading his Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals, it appeared as though Luka Dončić was truly ascending into a Best Player In The World stratosphere.
From the time Dončić was selected third overall in the 2018 Draft and made All-NBA First Team in his second year, that outcome felt predetermined — his mix of size, scoring and playmaking gifts paving the way for supernova sparkle. By the age of 21, he was already a full-fledged superstar being recognized as one of the league’s top-five players. Of course, he would inevitably reach the pinnacle soon.
In 2025-26, six years after his inaugural All-NBA First Team honor and two years after that dazzling dominance deep into the postseason, Dončić hasn’t quite solidified himself as Jokić or Gilgeous-Alexander’s utmost contemporary. A serious injury and a shocking trade disrupted his encore opportunity in 2024-25 while Jokić and, especially, Gilgeous-Alexander have, frankly, been undeniably better this season.
But sometime over the past year, right around when the Dallas Mavericks mystifyingly and foolishly opted to trade him to the Los Angeles Lakers, discourse, narratives and analysis spiraled regarding the 27-year-old, who remains a marvelous, marvelous player amid an all-time great career.
To an extent, I understand how discussions reached this point. The spotlight will always be magnified for those wearing a Lakers uniform. Los Angeles is the biggest market in the league (maybe, it’s New York, apologies if so). LeBron James is Dončić’s teammate. The Lakers play the most nationally televised games every season (again, maybe, it’s the Knicks, sorry).
No matter how well Dončić played in Dallas, the amount of eyeballs was always going to exponentiate because of where he now plays, who he plays alongside and how he arrived there. The peaks and valleys of his game are loud and contrasting. They would surely elicit increasingly extreme responses with more opinions in the audience.
How he arrived there is the other component fueling this intensified scrutiny. How could the Mavs trade away a 25-year-old, in-his-prime superstar months removed from a surprising NBA Finals run that featured one of the fiercest step-on-your-throat closeout game performances in league history?
Given the wealth of resources and proprietary insight available to NBA teams and personnel, there has to be something the public is missing, right? Dončić must be on the downswing of his career or approaching it soon, yes?
Or, perhaps, former Mavs GM Nico Harrison made a monumental, job-costing miscalculation, of which he and the Dallas organization are now experiencing the major ramifications*. Occam’s razor is in effect. Let it guide you.
*For the Mavs, those ramifications are lessened long-term by the lottery luck netting them Cooper Flagg, an unintended, unforeseen, (somewhat) unrelated result of dealing away Dončić. Harrison, meanwhile, was fired less than a year after the Dončić trade.
Today, Dončić is averaging 32.9 points (61.6 percent true shooting), 8.5 assists, 7.9 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game. He is enjoying one of his finest seasons to date and commandeering another Western Conference team toward a 50-win season, despite lengthy absences to co-stars in James and Austin Reaves, and immense inconsistencies from his supporting cast.
Although he is not on Gilgeous-Alexander or Jokić’s level as MVP candidates — Gilgeous-Alexander, with his edge as a scorer (31.8 points per game, 66.9 percent true shooting) and defender over his European rivals, is the clear favorite in my book — he should be a stone-cold lock for his sixth All-NBA First Team nod in seven seasons.
His plus-6.4 Estimated Plus-Minus is the second-best of his career (plus-7.5 in 2023-24) and ranks sixth league-wide (min. 20 games). Behind Gilgeous-Alexander (16.0) and Jokić (14.5), he is third (12.1) in EPM’s Estimated Wins metric, which accumulates across total minutes played as a volume stat rather than EPM’s per-minute rate stat.
All the consternation about Dončić’s declining rim frequency — it’s shrunk to a career-low 14 percent this year after peaking at 33 percent in 2019-20 — obscures his interior shot-making talent and touch. He is shooting 57.3 percent (88th percentile, per Cleaning the Glass) on 2-pointers, with just 28 percent (94th percentile) of those field goals coming via assists.
Rim frequency is often an indicator for interior dominance or lack thereof. Dončić’s dip has not made him a less effective inside-the-arc player. He’s shooting 50 percent in the midrange overall (82nd percentile), including 51 percent from 4-14 feet and 48 percent (73rd percentile) between 14 feet and the 3-point line.
Sure, it’d be nice if he could tap into his 82 percent(!!!!) at-the-rim mark (113-of-138 shooting) more often. But he’s been doing stuff like this all season to continue as a destroyer of worlds from 2-point land, rivaled only by Gilgeous-Alexander (60.5 percent on 2s) among perimeter-based offensive engines:
I can sympathize with any frustration or aesthetic displeasure derived from Dončić’s foul-hunting and head-scratching pull-up 3s; I even agree he should reduce some of the latter, particularly early in the clock — he is up to 37 percent beyond the arc, though!
But nonetheless, he’s been an absolutely supreme initiator this year; the depreciated rim frequency is not stunting his offensive impact compared to prior years no matter how much it is referenced during his occasionally poor games.
According to databallr, his true shooting percentage on creation play-types (pick-and-rolls, post-ups, isolation), is a career-high 61.8 — 8.3 points higher than league average. And he’s doing so on 21.8 creation true shot attempts per 100 possessions (100th percentile volume).
I’d also note Dončić is adapting to a less ball-dominant style than his heliocentric peak, running through more off-ball actions to ignite possessions or periodically ceding touches to James and Reaves.
After hovering around 52 percent(!?) from 2020 through 2024, his on-ball rate (40.5 percent) is the third-lowest of his career (37.2 percent last year, 40.4 percent as a rookie). And his catch-and-shoot 3-point rate (11.9 percent) is tied for a career-high. He’s knocking down 38.2 percent of those long-range looks.
For as well as Dončić is playing offensively, persisting as a resolutely titanic force, it does feel like he’s not entirely acclimated to his new home as a playmaker. Whether it’s unfamiliarity with teammates (half of the Lakers’ rotation wasn’t around last year) or a recognition Los Angeles’ ancillary characters aren’t an abundance of premier play-finishers — the result of some defensively slanted options to try and buoy that side of the ball — the Slovenian’s been a little imprecise and shot-happy in his decision-making.
His passing turnover rate is a career-worst 16.6 percent and he’s averaging 18.3 potential assists per 100 possessions, his lowest mark since his 2018-19 rookie season, per databallr; however, that still ranks in the 100th percentile. The disconnect and carelessness do crop up on plays like these:
While a small dent in his offensive armor, Dončić’s unforced live ball turnovers are a glimpse into his defensive foibles, most of which reside in the open floor. I’m a firm believer his defense is vastly better than viral, ghastly lowlights suggest (more on this briefly) but the inability to offer any reprieve on the fast break is a problem. And turnovers like some of the ones above exacerbate it.
Whereas Dončić’s deceleration, dexterity and balance ensure he’s not a non-athlete and are vital to his offensive dominion, those traits serve little utility in transition. Traditional, easily discernible gifts like speed, vertical explosion and quick hips for change of direction escape him in the open floor. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Lakers’ defense is 9.9 points worse per 100 transition plays, headlined by being 16.6 points worse per 100 off of steals, with Dončić on the floor.
These drawbacks are glaring and relevant to the landscape of Dončić’s defense. He is among the reasons Los Angeles is so poor containing fast breaks. Some of those same limitations straining his transition defense extend to the half-court, too.
His slow hips and poor lateral quickness render him an easy target on switches — the Lakers’ most common scheme against ball-screens — and in rotation to the perimeter. There are plenty of clips throughout his career showcasing porous point-of-attack and closeout defense. They are similarly part of his defensive landscape. Yet neither area paints the whole portrait.
Dončić has been a fine defender this season and an outright good one over the past ~month. He’s rotating punctually on the interior, properly funneling ball-handlers or drivers toward help against switches/closeouts and wielding feisty hands in passing lanes/around the rim (78th percentile block rate, 73rd percentile steal rate this season).
That sort of activity has ebbed and flowed throughout his game for years. It certainly is not an omnipresent component. But it is there as part of his defensive landscape and should be factored in just like the four-play compilation of blow-bys that garners 500,000 views on Twitter.
Dončić and the Lakers’ defensive uptick (11th in defensive rating since the All-Star Break) has helped them notch notable wins over the New York Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves this week. They’re now 41-25 and third in the West, with Dončić averaging 32-8-8-1 on 63 percent true shooting over the past 30 games, including recent 44- and 51-point outings.
After months of talk about whether Dončić’s (still-top-fiveish-caliber) play this season was vindicating — or merely providing supporting evidence for the idea — Dallas’ horrendous decision to trade him, discussions in many circles have now pivoted to wonder if he deserves more love in the MVP hunt. Both are rather off-base, especially the former.
Dončić should earn another All-NBA First Team berth. That does not mean he must be wedged into the MVP debate. It is Gilgeous-Alexander’s to lose, with Jokić and Victor Wembanyama as long-shot contenders to pluck the trophy away from the Canadian.
At the very least, though, it’s welcoming to see Dončić mentioned back in his rightful zip code as a top-five player on the fringe of MVP contention. Some of the names pushed ahead of him for MVP throughout the year were never correct, though nobody outside of Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić or (possibly) Wembanyama warrants inclusion.
MVP is bestowed to the best of the best. Conversations about it do not need to extend eight-to-10 players deep; doing so dilutes and distorts the quality necessary for such an award. All-NBA exists to celebrate those great, non-MVP-worthy campaigns, such as the one a player like Dončić is authoring.
He is tremendous, a 6-foot-7 point forward who doubles as one of the league’s top-two facilitators and top-three scorers; only the three-time MVP in Denver shares those credentials. By the time he retires, his prime could feature 10 All-NBA First Team banners. Maybe, he fine-tunes a few aspects of his game (shot selection, defensive consistency, passing detail) and win an MVP or two.
At this stage of his career, he has never been hosed out of that trophy like his most ardent supports claim. But he also never should’ve been traded, let alone for the low cost required. The Mavericks were abjectly, embarrassingly, colossally wrong about that move. Don’t squint while watching Dončić to try and see their perspective.
Just acknowledge (or enjoy!) the superstar in front of you swishing 19-foot, one-legged fadeaways, flinging no-look dimes and boisterously deeming every official an enemy of Team Luka, and embrace the totality of his game. It’s been too long since the NBA world collectively did that.