It’s Showtime for the Luka Lakers
Even though it’s already been more than three weeks since the Luka Doncic trade shocked the hoops world, Saturday night felt like the official debut of the Luka Lakers. After a few awkward games in his new uniform, Doncic clicked into vintage form with his first purple-and-gold masterpiece: 32 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists, four steals, and a win over the Nuggets. In a game that also featured LeBron James and Nikola Jokic, L.A.’s new star was the best dude on the floor.
For the Lakers, the victory was especially symbolic. Denver has tormented L.A. for years, winning 13 of their previous 14 matchups before Saturday—including eight of nine playoff games—and sending the Lakers packing two postseasons in a row. But in their latest bout with Luka in uniform, the Lakers never trailed. It was their first victory in Colorado since April 2022.
A new era of Lakers lore is here. The franchise that has been defined by a procession of all-time greats has somehow landed another. Doncic is the latest in a long and storied lineage that includes Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Elgin Baylor, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, and so many more.
Watching Luka carve up the Nuggets on national TV raised the obvious, weeks-old question of why the hell anyone would want to trade this guy. But it also raised another question that might be the most intriguing subplot of what’s left of the 2024-25 NBA season: Just how good are these Lakers? At 34-21, tied for fourth in the West and heading into a huge matchup against Doncic’s former team, is L.A. a legit contender right now?
In a passionate locker room pep talk after the Denver game, head coach JJ Redick gassed up his group: “Pregame, I’m laying on the floor doing my breathing exercises, I’m envisioning what our team is gonna play like, and you guys went even higher,” he said. After acknowledging great bench play, Redick turned his attention to his new star. “Luka, it’s good to have you fucking back! It’s good to have you back.”
In Doncic, the Lakers have the best young scorer in basketball, a 2020s portrait of bucket-getting excellence. Through seven seasons, the 25-year-old Slovenian has the third-highest scoring average (28.6 points per game) in NBA history, behind Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain. With five first-team All-NBA nods already, Luka is one of the most accomplished young players ever. Last season, he won the scoring title at age 24 by averaging 33.9 points per game. His shot chart reveals a thoroughly modern player who thrives beyond the arc and in the paint.
Doncic’s 3-point prowess has become central to his game. En route to the 2023-24 scoring crown, he logged 11.1 points per game in the paint, 12.3 per game from 3-point range, and 6.8 per game at the line. Only Stephen Curry made more 3s last season than Doncic, who arrives in Los Angeles with his patented stepback 3—a move so reliable and efficient that it has the potential to become the most iconic scoring move in Lakerland since Kareem’s Skyhook.
Like Abdul-Jabbar, Doncic combines immense size, tremendous feel for the game, and elite coordination to create his own scoring opportunities. Unlike Abdul-Jabbar, Doncic doesn’t set up shop on the low blocks; instead, he works downtown, creating hundreds of his own shots per season from distances that would’ve been considered ludicrous just 10 years ago.
Nobody in the association attempts as many self-created triples as Doncic, and it’s not close. Last year, Curry—the greatest shooter ever—ranked second in the NBA with 397 unassisted 3-point tries. Doncic tried 549.
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Doncic loves to break down perimeter defenders off the dribble, reading and reacting to their balance with each bounce of the ball. His skill as a driver means that his defenders must respect a potential forward attack, and that’s key. Last season, Doncic ranked third in the league in total drives and first in efficiency among the NBA’s most active drivers.
That threat sets the stage for the choreography that defines Doncic’s signature move. Just ask Christian Braun, who found out the hard way on Saturday night. Near the end of the first half, Doncic had the ball in his happy place, deep along the left wing. He crouched into form, head up, pounding the rock into the Ball Arena decal and reading Braun’s balance like a prizefighter. All it took was a little right-footed jab step to get Braun to open up his stance; as soon as Doncic saw that, it was over.
He pulled the ball back and sank a 28-footer in Braun’s face. On the call on ABC, Mike Breen captured the moment, “Doncic, stepback 3 … it’s good … Doncic dancin’ on the floor tonight.”
When you map out Doncic’s most common shot locations, there are two hot spots: one near the rim and another deep along the left wing. This perimeter hot spot is where he got Braun on Saturday night—it’s also the epicenter for Doncic’s favorite dance.
Call it Mount Doncic. The threat of a right-handed drive from here is terrifying enough that defenders can’t overplay the stepback, but the stepback is deadly enough that defenders must try to limit it as well. Nobody can do both. Doncic knows this, and his footwork and dribbling sequences are designed to force his defender to pick their poison. Overplay the stepback, and he’ll blow by. Overplay the drive, and he’ll drill a 3.
If there’s one major development that fueled Doncic’s rise to scoring champ, it’s the improvements in his long-range shooting. Last year, he set career highs in both 3-point attempts and 3-point percentage, converting 38.2 percent of 744 total 3s.
That would be a respectable percentage for any volume shooter, but it’s especially impressive for a player who leans so heavily into the stepback 3, which has a much higher degree of difficulty than a catch-and-shoot attempt. NBA shooters convert just 34.1 percent of their stepback 3s; Doncic made more than 39 percent of his last year. As he enters his prime, there’s a good chance that number will climb even higher, which spells trouble for the rest of the league.
And like James, Doncic is more than just a scorer—he’s one of the best at creating shots with the pass, too. Last season, his assists led to another 25 points per game for the Mavs, including 10.4 points per game on assisted 3s.
There’s no question that Doncic is the best young scorer in the world, but there are questions about whether or not this Lakers team is good enough to get him back to the Finals for a second straight year. In Dallas, Jason Kidd designed the Mavs’ entire system around Doncic’s singular ability, surrounding him with spot-up shooters, rim runners, and strong defenders. In Los Angeles, Redick already has LeBron, the very prototype for a ball-dominant forward in the Luka mold.
It’s no wonder that Doncic identified LeBron as his basketball idol way back in 2018. Luka leverages his scoring and passing vision to elevate his entire team in the same way James did when his squads perennially ranked in the top five in offense. There’s an undeniable symmetry in Doncic succeeding LeBron as the NBA’s point forward du jour, but what about their fit together on this year’s Lakers? Both players rank in the top six in touches per game this decade for a simple reason: They have both been the bus drivers of their offenses. And now, the Lakers have two bus drivers, but only one bus. (Well, multiple Busses, if we count Jeanie and her brothers.)
This isn’t Malone and Stockton. James and Doncic love the same places on the dance floor. Both guys favor the deep left wing and driving to the cup.
But while it’s tempting to see this geographic overlap as a potential problem, it’d be silly to expect any offense that features James and Doncic to be clumsy.
These are two of the best offensive players ever. They are both among the smartest, most competitive, and most creative, too. At James’s apex in Miami, he found ways to fit alongside Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade en route to four straight Finals runs. He effectively teamed up with Kyrie Irving in Cleveland to topple a 73-win Golden State juggernaut, years before Luka and Kyrie also teamed up to great effect on the West-winning 2024 Mavs. It turns out that the NBA’s all-time leading scorer is a pretty versatile player. He’s also 40, and Doncic represents a respite—a chance for LeBron to play off the ball more and perhaps devote more energy to defense and rebounding.
There are already signs that Luka and LeBron are starting to figure out their partnership. Luka, in particular, looks like Cavs-era Kevin Love because of the way he’s slinging outlet passes to a streaking LeBron in transition. In the half court, LeBron is finding himself on the receiving end of passes that only he and a few others can make.
If LeBron, Luka, and the Lakers continue to play like they did on Saturday in Colorado, blending high-quality shots with few turnovers, then they’ll be contenders. But that remains a big “if” for a team that must find a new identity on the fly within the context of a brutal Western Conference playoff picture.
The offense will be fine. Forty-eight minutes of Luka and/or LeBron will mean great scoring efficiency, period. The larger question is on the other end of the floor. Can a Lakers defense built around Doncic, James, Austin Reaves, and a paper-thin center rotation get enough stops to win multiple playoff series?
Recent numbers are better than you might expect. Without Anthony Davis, who was injured even before L.A. traded him, the Lakers defense is tied for third in efficiency since the start of February. That’s a striking reminder that Doncic isn’t the only new piece of the Lakers rotation. The defense is now bolstered by Dorian Finney-Smith (another trade acquisition) and Jarred Vanderbilt (who made his season debut on January 25).
The Lakers defensive corps did a great job defending Jokic over the weekend—fronting him, denying him the ball, using the low man to cut off his rolls, and daring him to trust his shooters on the edges. It worked. The Lakers’ swarming defense held the reigning MVP to only 12 points while forcing six turnovers. It was one of Jokic’s worst performances of the year and a huge reason Denver managed only 100 points, its fourth-lowest output of the entire season.
The victory felt like a possible harbinger of things to come. If the Lakers can play that well, that hard, and with that much discipline, the ceiling is a title. It’s that simple.
In his fiery postgame victory speech that night, Redick closed with this: “If we play that hard for the rest of the season, we’re gonna be just fine. That should build your belief. It built my belief in what we can accomplish.”
End of article
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Luka Doncic’s 32-point night helps Lakers finally win in Denver
DENVER — It took Luka Doncic only one quarter Saturday to match his highest scoring output from his first three games with the Lakers, tallying 16 points while Los Angeles built an early lead on the Denver Nuggets.
He kept rolling from there — and so did the Lakers — as Doncic finished with a game-high 32 points in a 123-100 win that gave Los Angeles its first victory in Denver in nearly three years.
“It’s very tough to play here against that team,” said Doncic, who added 10 rebounds, seven assists and four steals in his fourth game with the Lakers since being traded earlier this month. “Just to win like that, it’s an amazing win for us and gives me a lot of confidence moving forward.”
The Lakers ended the Nuggets’ nine-game winning streak and snapped an eight-game skid at Ball Arena. The last time the Lakers beat the Nuggets in a regular-season contest on Denver’s home floor was April 10, 2022.
Lakers coach JJ Redick challenged Doncic before the game to get so wrapped up in the competition that he has a “blackout episode” where he starts yelling indiscriminately in the heat of battle.
That happened several times Saturday.
“He was super dialed in,” LeBron James said of Doncic. “He was very locked in on what he wanted to do out here on the floor tonight. Once he started hitting those step-back 3s and got to yelling and barking, either at the fans or at us, or himself.”
Doncic had averaged 14.7 points on 35.6% shooting (20.8% from 3) through his first three games with the Lakers while slowly integrating into the lineup after a left calf injury had kept him sidelined since Christmas with the Dallas Mavericks.
Saturday night, Doncic led Los Angeles in shot attempts, going 10-for-22 from the field, and was tied for the lead in assists.
James had 25 points on 11-for-19 shooting with nine rebounds, five assists and three blocks, and fellow starters Austin Reaves (23 points, 7 assists) and Rui Hachimura (21 points, 4 assists) also topped the 20-point plateau.
Redick said Doncic will see more touches.
“I think Luka needs to be the guy that controls the offense,” Redick said. “And Bron and AR, because we’re going to stagger everybody, they’re going to have their times to be on the ball. But all three of those guys are very intelligent basketball players, and we can create mismatches. We can get teams in the blender.”
James, who was the beneficiary of a full-court outlet pass from Doncic to score on a streaking dunk a couple of possessions into the game, endorsed Redick’s plan.
“I’m a natural-born wide receiver and he’s a natural-born quarterback, so it fits perfectly,” James said.
With Doncic’s first game against his former team looming Tuesday, when Los Angeles hosts Dallas, the Lakers’ new star already sounded convinced he will make an NBA Finals run with his new group, the way he did with the Mavericks last year.
“I think our goal is — not I think, I know our goal is to win a championship,” Doncic said. “That’s our only goal. And I think we have the team for that.”
The NBA world was turned upside down Feb. 2 when the Dallas Mavericks traded five-time All-Star Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a future pick.
The deal sent shockwaves through the league leading to on-going discourse about the repercussions of the deal in Dallas and what the future now holds for the Lakers, one of the most decorated franchises in the league history. The ire from Mavericks fans erupted after the franchise questioned the conditioning and commitment of their former superstar on his way to Los Angeles and Davis picked up another lengthy stay on the IR midway through his first game in Dallas.
In the three weeks since the trade, the Mavericks have gone 5-4 and maintained a solid hold in the Western Conference’s play-in tournament despite a run of impactful injuries. Kyrie Irving averaged 27.7 points during that stretch as the new look Dallas roster attempts to navigate the post-Luka world.
Meanwhile, the Lakers are just 2-2 in games when Doncic plays. He’s averaged 19.0 points over that span but appeared to turn a corner on Saturday with a 32 point, 10 rebound and seven assist performance against the Denver Nuggets in a 123-100 win. A calf injury had sidelined Doncic for nearly six weeks (22 games) prior to the trade and the Los Angeles staff has kept an eye on his health as he gets back into playing shape with a brand new franchise. He’s averaging 26.7, 8.5 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game this season.
The Lakers host the Mavericks on Tuesday (10 p.m. ET) in the teams’ first game since the trade that sent Luka to Los Angeles.
ESPN Insiders Dave McMenamin and Tim MacMahon will be keeping tabs on all the updates inside the arena in the build up to the game in our live blog while Tim Bontemps and Chris Herring will provide analysis from this highly anticipated Western Conference clash.
McMenamin: Inside the first 24 days of the Luka Dončić era with the Los Angeles Lakers
Shelburne-MacMahon: How this stunning Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade came together
Pelton: Winners, losers, what’s next on the Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade
Bontemps: League reaction and potential fallout from the massive Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade
Rothstein: Inside the Dallas fans protest the Luka Doncic trade
Rhoden: Luka Doncic, Anthony Davis are NBA’s latest chess board pieces
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Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Dalton Knecht combine for 61 points at Denver
Los Angeles (34-21) defeated Denver (37-20), 123-100, on Saturday at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado.
Luka Doncic led all scorers with 32 points for the Lakers. He was traded to Los Angeles from Dallas on Feb. 2.
Doncic, LeBron James and former Vol Dalton Knecht combined for 61 points at Denver. James scored 25 points, while Knecht finished with four points.
Knecht converted 1-of-3 field goal attempts and 2-of-2 free throw attempts in nine minutes. He also recorded one rebound, one steal and one block.
The former Vol was selected in the first round of the 2024 NBA draft (17th) by Los Angeles.
Knecht was a transfer from Northern Colorado and played for the Vols during the 2023-24 season under coach Rick Barnes. During his one season at Tennessee, Knecht averaged 21.7 points, 4.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game.
He led the Vols to a SEC regular-season championship and an appearance in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament for the second time in school history.
Knecht was the 2024 SEC Player and SEC Newcomer of the Year. He was a consensus All-America standout and earned the Julius Erving Award.
