LOL he doesn't have to be a superstar or franchise player he just needs to be better than Trae "Curry" Young and Marvin Bagley III and so far Dallas made out like bandits i this draft.
Yeah, not sure where this narrative of 'SUPERSTAR OR BUST' came from. Dude is already one of the greatest steals from recent drafts.
Not to mention, the bar for the number 3 pick wasn't all that high ever since Harden was drafted: 2010 - Derrick Favors 2011 - Enes Kanter 2012 - Bradley Beal 2013 - Otto Porter 2014 - Joel Embiid 2015 - Jahlil Okafor 2016 - Jaylen Brown 2017 - Jayson Tatum None of these players are SUPERSTARS, Embiid is close to being one, but not really there yet. Tatum is very promising, but so is Luka. There's also one borderline All-Star and a bunch of role players / scrubs.
Both Embiid and Luka were going to be 1st pick, but injuries (Embiid) and other factors (Luka) prevented them from being one. So I think more accurate comparison would be to either 1st or at least 2nd picks in all these years. I'd especially like to see how will Luka compare to Ben Simmons in a few years. Athletically Simmons has a huge lead on him, while Luke can say the same about shooting.
I was thinking about this. I think not being a freak athlete won't stop Luka from becoming a complete player, since he's still more than adequate athletically. HOWEVER, not being able to shoot at all will stop Simmons from being a truly complete player. Now if we only could combine them into 1 player somehow...
Not quite, but pretty close I reckon. LeBron's basketball IQ and court-vision/passing is still quite a bit superior to Simmons/Luka's.
Plus Luka is already Euroleague MVP while just being 19 yrs old clearly he has genius Bball IQ thats why he beat people more skilled and experienced without relying on freakish athleticism. The only knock on him is his athleticism might not be enough in the NBA but Hawks picked somebody who makes Luka look like a roided out Lebron in comparison and Sac picked somebody who got overrated in March madness. Still makes me chuckle on how horrible those picks are in a redraft right now Young and Bagley might fall out of 1st round.
After 1st quarter of Dallas-76ers game, Dončić doesn't look as comfortable as he did in first game. He threw two very nice passes, one behind the back that didn't find the way to the rim (its' recipient was a bit surprised by it) and a very nice alley oop pass. Got one 3 blocked by Convington because he didn't get enough separation and airballed another one. Here's to hope to a better 2nd quarter!
Better 2nd quarter for Luka. He is handling the ball much more than 1st game. One of his very strong plays is defensive rebound into outlet pass, sort of like Kevin Love's. He's already got more assists than the game against Beijing Ducks. But my god, what a gap in athtleticism between him and Simmons. At one point, Dončić was attacking and Simmons switched onto him. Luka couldn't get any separation at all, let alone blow by him. At end of quarter, his face was red and he was gassed a bit. If he loses another 10 pounds, it would help him tremendously.
Doncic already looks like (at the very least) an average defender in the NBA. Could become a really good two-way player, which is a bit of a shocker since my expectations for him were mostly tied to his offensive game. But he hustles and positions himself well on the defensive end and seems to be able to have an impact even when his shot isn't falling.
If he improves his conditioning drastically, then yeah. Right now he is gassed before 4th quarter even begins.
Is it weird how all of those picks were back to back to the same team? Tatum and Brown - Celtics. Okafor and Embiid - 76ers. Porter and Beal - Wizards. Kanter was drafted by the Jazz. Favors was drafted by the Nets and traded to the Jazz for Deron Williams that year. Combo breaker! Harden was 3rd and Westbook was 4th the two years before that for the Sonics/Thunder.
