Luka Doncic Discussion: Lean Mean Slovenian Scoring Machine

At least a week really means a month.

 

It’s joever

 

I'm thinking 2-3 weeks.

 

that's what happens when he's forced to carry the team every night. he couldn't even last 3 games

lebron era needs to end already. get luka a star who isn't 41

reaves and ayton stepped up tonight, but you're not going to have someone dropping 40+ every night. the rest of the team needs to step it up too, even when luka's back

 

He just sprained his finger from a normal basketball injury, happens to every player.

Luka must be really thrilled with this teams, I don’t think he’s ever had to be just the third option on offense with Reaves as the first option. And then he has LeBron, Ayton and Rui as his 4th, 5th and 6th options.

Pretty stacked if I do say so.

 

Same thing with the contusion wherever it is …. basketball / s*** happens injury. Stop with it’s from Luka having to carry the team and “overwork” because LeBron’s out.

 

yeah, neither was a wear-and-tear injury. just bad luck, which happens to lots of players all the time. i'm just glad we got at least one win with both him and lebron out. you'd expect zero.

 

I was a little concerned that might happen when JJ had him play the entire first quarter again Minny. It's all good though. I'm not too worried. AR holding down the fort and we should be in good shape once JJ figures out rotations.

 

That's what I was thinking. They are trying to prepare for the playoffs like smart teams do. Dallas would keep him playing injured through the season. By the time the playoffs came around he was still incredible but very hobbled at times.

 

This is the way. Look at the Dodgers. Focused on health, rest, and ramping up slowly during the 2nd half of the regular season, saving their starters for the postseason. That's balanced by wanting to get at least the 6 seed, but I would take the play in and full health over the 1 seed and injuries.

 

Winning a ring is such a crapshoot, with injuries playing such a huge role every year plus the parity brought on by the 2nd apron stuff from last CBA, that l laugh at and pity the contingent of badge wearing “ring is the ONLY thing” …. proclaimers. Don’t care about 80 percent of all games, regular season, and to take them literally as they want you to …. hell even the 1st 3 rounds of the playoffs. Screw enjoying pro basketball played by your own wildly successful over the years LA Lakers …. during the regular season and god forbid being huge fans of any individual player or players because you like/love the way they play the game. If these types “think” (certainly not guaranteed) some other player elsewhere gives the team 5% more chance in their opinion over any of your current players, at that 1 chance over 15 top teams every year after all the injuries shake out …. ship anyone and everyone out for that person other than your current best player …. and screw all the rest of you with your silly fandom of “players” over(??) “team”. This is the ONLY way!!! Screw that attitude … IMO.

 

Rickybobbydom also confounds me. Let’s compete night in and night out and hope for some breaks.

 

Some of us are old Lakers fans when winning more often than not was the standard .

We still have not made/accepted the switch to this "crap/everybody is getting hurt" era

 

it's really the second apron era more than anything. we didn't get big spending owners until it was too later, and we didn't manage the kobe denouement very well at all.

tbh, pretty much no team does--dallas and san antonio did better than we did with dirk and duncan but still went from perennial (like 20 years straight) 50-win teams to non-playoff teams for a while as they just lost dirk and duncan for nothing. it's hard to think of a franchise that has successfully managed a decline and retirement of a generational star. this is why i say that nobody is itching to get rob's job right now. he's likely going to take the fall for not being able to manage a pretty impossible situation with lebron.

anyway, i just don't understand how people keep up with fandom if they're going to be bitterly disappointed year after year with all but one result. i'm actually to the point where i find even players and coaches with this attitude as kind of caricatures. like, of course you want to win it all, and of course that's your goal. but if anything short of that means a wasted year of your life or something, find a therapist.

 

my point exactly

 

For fans, at the very least, it is all about the journey. The nature of the modern NBA is up years followed by down years. It IS the nature of the beast and is exactly what the owners and league FO want it to be. They want everyone to have their chance to win a title and they don't really want anyone to dominate past a single superstars time frame. And even then, I can see the owners wanting to change a rule or two here and there, to help mitigate a single players dominance. Hear that Wemby?? I bet they will be looking at him and thinking about what rules they can change to make the game harder for him. Certainly, I expect them to allow more defensive pressure. We will see. If they don't do anything and he continues to improve, the crowns are his as long as he is not injured.

But the journey can be a good thing, seeing a team rebuild can be exciting and interesting to watch but it takes some patience. Hey man, watching Jerry West miss so many opportunities was gut wrenching for everybody. But you could never discount how awesome he was and the team tried to build a solid contender around him. We had some pretty awesome lineups. It just wasn't in the cards. When they finally won, it was amazing.

 

You shouldn't. The 95 Rockets are the only team in the history of the league to win the title without a Top 3 seed. No Top 3 seed, no trophy. Period.

The way to do it is to get out to a hot start so you can afford to rest down the stretch. That's what OKC did last year, Boston the year before that, and Denver the year before that.

 

That's a different argument. In my comparison, would you rather have the play in and a 100% healthy team, or the 1 seed and no Luka or LeBron?

 

That’s the whole issue - it’s a false binary. Is there any reason to think that Luka missing this week with a sprained finger and bruise significantly increases the odds he’d miss a playoff run?

The NBA released a report in January 2024 saying there was no correlation between load management and a reduced risk of injury. Now that doesn’t mean load management doesn’t work, but it means that they haven’t been able to prove that it does. Which rings true to me - doesn’t it feel like despite the abundance of caution teams employ in the regular season, there are more impactful playoff injuries than ever?

I feel like this mindset of “just get through the regular season” has seeped in despite really no evidence that it works health wise or results wise (like I said, the only teams that win it all are the dominant regular season teams). I think JJ should have been asked all week, non-stop why Luka is missing a week for an injury he easily finished a game with. I think the head trainer should have to take questions from the media and actually explain their assessment as to why missing a week is necessary. I think NBA injury reports should be scrutinized as much as NFL reports. I think there needs to be way more transparency with this stuff, because I kind of think everyone (teams, players, league) have just decided they don’t really care about the regular season and this is a convenient excuse.