Dallas Basketball

‘I Was Batman, Now I’m Robin’: Dragic on Joining Mavs’ Doncic at EuroBasket 2022

Slovenia won the EuroBasket title in 2017 with Goran Dragic leading the way. Now, a grown up Luka Doncic will be the leader five years later.

Dalton Trigg

Although Goran Dragic won’t join his Slovenian “little brother” Luka Doncic as a member of the Dallas Mavericks this summer — Dragic instead signed with the Chicago Bulls in July — he’ll be joining Doncic on the Slovenia national team for EuroBasket 2022.

It was initially believed that Dragic would retire from international play earlier this summer after Slovenia’s two World Cup qualifying matches earlier this summer. However, on Friday, Dragic tweeted out a picture of him holding the 2017 EuroBasket championship trophy with the caption, "I'M BACK." It is assumed that this will be Dragic's last hurrah with Slovenia.

When Slovenia shocked the world by winning EuroBasket 2017, Dragic was the undisputed leader of the team, as he scored 35 points in the final match against Serbia. This time, though, Dragic knows things will be much different given how much Doncic has grown as a superstar player.

"I will play a little less minutes, it will not be at that (same) level,” said Dragic. “I don’t know how much I played, 36 minutes per game? Everything will depend on how I feel. The role will definitely be different. I was Batman (then), but now I’ll be Robin.

"The most important thing will be to make sure we have good chemistry and be a leader on the court and lift guys up when it’s most difficult.”

Although Dragic will be “Robin” this time around, he’ll still more than capable of putting up a lot of points in a short period of time. He scored 39 points in 46 minutes of play in Slovenia’s wins over Croatia and Sweden earlier this summer.

Before EuroBasket 2022 is over, the Mavs front office might wish they had offered Dragic more than a “cheerleading” role in free agency.

You can follow Dalton Trigg on Twitter at @dalton_trigg

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Dalton Trigg
DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.

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