‘He’s Not a Worker’: Can Luka Doncic Defy Critics & Make Mavs Big Winners?

Luckily for Doncic and the Mavs, the rest of the Western Conference has been a crapshoot.

After having mostly-glamorous second and third seasons in the NBA with back-to-back All-NBA First Team selections, Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic has had a turbulent start to his fourth season.

Although Doncic is averaging 25.6 points, 8.0 rebounds and 8.6 assists per game this season, he’s only shooting 44.7-percent from the field and 32.6-percent from three-point range. Doncic shot career-highs 47.9-percent from the field and 35-percent from deep last season.

Another difficulty Doncic has faced this year is the national media zeroing in on his physical state and questioning his drive like never before.

A few weeks ago, ESPN’s Tim MacMahon reported that Doncic had shown up to Mavs training camp 30 pounds overweight each of the last two years. And yesterday, here is what The Ringer’s Kevin O’Conner had to say about Doncic recently:

Doncic is a magnificent talent, a no-doubt top-10 player who could not improve a lick from today and still make the Hall of Fame. Luka is a generational talent. But he’s not a generational worker.

Doncic hasn’t improved physically since he was a 19-year-old rookie, and his game has not come far since his second season, when he was fourth in MVP voting. Luka remains an inconsistent 3-point shooter. He hasn’t cut down on turnovers. He’s one of the most inactive players without the ball in his hands. At one point, he advanced on defense, but he’s been worse this season. In a league full of players investing millions of dollars and countless unseen hours into their bodies and skills, does Luka do everything he can?

The answer to that question is ‘no’, and it’s something Doncic himself agrees that he has to work on going forward. Not just for the sake of his team’s performance, but for his long-term health as well when it comes to his ankles and knees.

“I know I gotta do better,” said Doncic after a 102-99 loss to the Brooklyn Nets where the Mavs led by as many as 17 points.

“I had a long summer,” Doncic continued. “I had the Olympics, took three weeks off, relaxed a little bit. Maybe too much. I’ve just got to get back on track.”

The silver lining to all of this is that Doncic is more than capable of taking constructive criticism and adjusting to it accordingly. He’s too competitive not to, and this is the first time in his career where the heat has been turned up on him this high.

After having nearly three weeks off to get his ankle right (and, we suspect, to get his conditioning right too), Doncic should be primed for a monster start to the new year.

Luckily for Doncic and the Mavs, the rest of the Western Conference has been a crapshoot this season, even before the recent COVID resurgence throughout the league. Dallas, despite all the early-season bumps in the road, is currently 16-17 and just three games of the 4th-seed Memphis Grizzlies in the loss column.

As the Mavs potentially make ‘fringe’ roster adjustments over the next week or so, the team’s newfound energy on both ends of the court should mesh well with Doncic’s return.

In what has felt like a potential lost season at certain points throughout these first 33 games, the fact of the matter is that things could be a whole lot worse for the Mavs than they currently are.

There are still 49 games to play, and with Doncic set to make his return, don’t be surprised if Dallas has climbed back into the top half of the Western Conference playoff picture by February.