Who’s A Big Boy

Can Luka Dončić show his new young fanbase how to grow up?

Last weekend, as the NBA rolled into its last set of games before the yearly trade period closes, my son prepared for his second game of a wildfire-interrupted recreational league basketball season. It was team photo day. So on Saturday morning, earlier than usual, we hurriedly made our way to a city gym a few neighborhoods over.

On the eve of his eleventh birthday, already taller than his babysitter and closing in on his mother and me, I tried unsuccessfully to straighten my son’s bedhead hair, as he rushed to join his teammates before the camera.

His first game had been a great success. Standing inches above everyone else in uniform, armed with an ability to run the court with something close to a much shorter player’s speed (perhaps the only of his many skills that I may reasonably claim he inherited from me), he was able to play freely at both ends. At one point, losing his defender at the top of the key with a between-the-legs dribble, he sank the 3-point shot and ran back on defense, keeping his arched shooting hand high in celebration. For a little longer than I was comfortable with.

We would talk about that later. He was largely controlling the game and he was enjoying himself. With the help of his team, he made winning look easy. The referees noticed, the coaches noticed, the other parents noticed. In the span of one off-season – and one game – he’d gone from a reliable player, working hard; to a standout player in his division. In short, he was suddenly that guy.

The second game wasn’t a whole lot different: A comfortable win, with my son gobbling up the majority of points. While still battling away to defend and give his teammates their own scoring chances, when they were unable to generate them alone.

He may be in a that guy phase, but he is a kind player, too. Which isn’t a given, it would seem, in a land where college scholarships promise life-changing rewards and a “winning” mentality can justify almost anything. He actually cares about his teammates and lifts them up when they need it. He hustles, plays fair and rarely fouls. He smiles and jokes with the refs. In those ways, more than with buckets, he makes his mother and me proud. He’s still growing, but we hope that never changes.

That evening a friend who follows the NBA more closely than I texted, looking for a reaction to news that my team (and my son’s team), the Los Angeles Lakers, had landed one of the game’s most talented young stars; Luka Dončić. This was big news, not that I was celebrating.

It’s easy to imagine Dončić being that guy as a boy, too. I assume it’s a given for almost any professional player to have dominated young teams, stacked with kids just trying to have fun. In fact, growing up in Slovenia with a dad playing pro, Dončić reportedly joined the juniors at his father’s club as an 8-year-old, and immediately played with the under-12 team. He would have played with the under-14s, but league rules wouldn’t allow it. By the age of 16 he was playing professionally in Spain.

In 2018, at 19-years-old (young for the pros, where college typically comes first), he joined the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. There, against the best players in the world, Dončić has scored points almost at will. Accumulating more than any other player in the league in 2023/24, on his way to the NBA Finals that same season.

Yet his lack of defensive statistics tell a very different story, and reveal a much less likable attitude.

One of the reasons I love basketball, and inversely, don’t like American football, is that I like sports that switch from offense to defense, and back again, fluidly. Meaning that even if you’re a great scorer like Dončić, you will regularly be called upon to help your team stop your opponents from making shots, too.

Given that American football is essentially played by two different teams – offensive and defensive – which swap out completely when possession changes hands, it is largely devoid of the excitement of watching someone master both sides of the game. The skillful attacker making a game-saving defensive play, or defender sneaking in meaningful points, are for me some of team sports’ most memorable and enriching moments. What basketball fan could forget The Block by LeBron James in the 2016 NBA Finals?

It is in these moments that we catch a glimpse of supreme athletes, who routinely make elite performance look effortless, visibly trying. Something we all know the feeling of and can relate to. For most of us, life is all trying, and only sometimes succeeding.

Sports are quite literally games, but it is hard to escape their constant mirroring of real life, particularly when you have a child playing. Real life is not all offense, nor is it all defense. It consists of wins and losses, too. Tricky opponents. Good teammates and wanting ones.

Last year, when my son was going through a particularly bad losing streak in basketball and baseball, with me sitting in the stands through almost every painstaking minute, I developed a useful kind of mantra for sporting parents: Losing is just as important as winning, I would say to myself, whenever I felt hopelessly sad for him or was tempted to inject myself into the competition in some way. I want him to succeed, but deep down I know he needs to learn about failure, too. That it will not only make him a better athlete, but a much better person.

Still, that guy in basketball tends to be a scorer, and as such, can rack up offensive statistics and rest on their laurels when the grunt work starts down the other end. Leaving their teammates in the lurch. This is something Dončić has become infamous for. As well as leaning on skill over physical fitness, and complaining loudly when calls don’t go his way.

In Game 3 of the 2024 NBA Finals, already down two-games-to-nothing to the Boston Celtics, Dončić’s defensive laziness and boyish temperament were widely credited with costing the Mavericks the best-of-seven series. Crudely using his whole body to block an attacking Celtics player in the last quarter, Dončić was rightly called for his sixth foul, past an individual player’s limit of five per game, triggering automatic ejection.

Seated on the court, he slammed his hands against the wooden floor in frustration, and screamed profanely at his bench staff to have the referees run a review of the call. His messy attempt to become an instant defender had failed on the biggest stage. Too little, too late. The Mavericks went on to lose the series 4-1.

After the ejection game, ESPN journalist Brian Windhorst, in a scathing and almost breathless summation of the star’s collapse, described Dončić as a “hole” in the Maverick’s defense. If you tend to think of defenders forming a wall for their opposition to try to penetrate, this was not a kind characterization. Especially of a bonafide star, in a league prone to coddling its best players.

The prayer in Lakers fans’ hearts this week is that Dončić’s shock dismissal from Dallas will spark some self-reflection. At the news conference to introduce him to the town, Dončić sat beside Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka. Pelinka is an ex-agent and even in his middle years still looks desperately the part of an old fashioned, Hollywood wheeler and dealer. Dressed in a black leather jacket two sizes too small, laden with far more zippers than style, he gazed out into the media throng like a man simultaneously very happy with his work, and on the brink of awkwardly producing a switchblade on them, only to open it the wrong way.

Beside him was the suddenly much younger looking Dončić. Dressed as a kind of boyish, opposite-number to Britney Spears’ early, schoolgirl chic character; pressed ash-colored slacks, and a grey wool crewneck sweater, allowing just a peak of the starched, white, button-down shirt collar riding up his stubbly neck. He hunched forward on his stool, as if expecting a scolding from the headmaster, and spoke into a Lakers-branded microphone in gentle, tentative tones. Sheepishly reassuring fans that he meant business in this town. That it would be different this time. For real.

Though I could barely take my eyes off the hilarity that is Pelinka, as far as modern media-management strategies go – and sport has never been more glazed over by them – it was a polished performance.

But the performance I keep thinking about was last year’s, ending with Dončić’s infuriated butt planted on a basketball court. His doughy, sweaty body twisted with disappointment. His gaping mouth screaming at his coaches and teammates, as if it were all their fault that he never bothered to learn defense.

Standing outside the rec center on Saturday, just hours before Dončić’s arrival in our town became public knowledge, my son was basking in the glow of his rec team’s win and his good game. He was back in black Crocs sandals, festooned in Kobe Bryant “jibbitz”, as he only wears his basketball sneakers on the court. The contest over, he now focussed on the after-game snack, while his little sister looked to nab any left-overs. Parents congratulated him, and even the opposition coach told him that he loves to watch him play. One mother suggested to my wife she get some video online soon, for college coaches to see. To which she nodded politely.

“Already..?” my son later asked, incredulously.

None of us are anywhere near taking this sort of talk seriously – not least my son. Yet such is the power of being that guy. Even if only for two games, in a community rec league, at 10-years-old. Sport weaves powerful fantasies, not just for those who play it, and it starts when you're very young. For the lucky few, bodies hold and dreams come true. Sometimes rolling all the way into a staggeringly profitable career, playing your favorite childhood game.

Our son has a long way to go and a hell of a lot of growing up to do, still. Thankfully he knows it. I know that I, and half the town, are hoping the Lakers’ latest big name recruit, Luka Dončić, might finally show him the way.