Luka Dončić isn't short on accolades during his basketball life. He won Liga ACB MVP and EuroLeague MVP in 2018 as a teenager, won a EuroLeague title, won NBA Rookie of the Year, has made first-team All-NBA five times, won the scoring title in 2024 and took the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals. Lakers fans are hoping he adds some more now that he's in Los Angeles, and while the NBA season doesn't start for a few months, Luka has already put together a monster summer for his home country.
After beating Iceland on Tuesday, Luka and the Slovenia National Team are headed to the knockout stage of EuroBasket — an impressive achievement on its own. If Luka can lead a run deep into the tournament, it would be one of the most impressive things he's done in his pro career; Slovenia has no other NBA players on its roster, and although many of their players are surely talented, most of them have spent time mostly in the Slovenian League, not considered one of the top leagues in the world.
Luka is dragging Slovenia to the knockout round of EuroBasket
It wasn't too long ago that Slovenia won EuroBasket — in 2017, the team took home gold — so it's not as if this team has been downtrodden or struggled in European competitions. But that team looked an awful lot different from this team, as it was led by Goran Dragić (who made the NBA All-Star Game the following season after EuroBasket) and Anthony Randolph, who became a legend in European hoops after his NBA career.
Now both of those guys are gone, and Luka is on a mission to will Slovenia to another deep EuroBasket run. In four group stage games, Luka scored 34, 39, 26, 26, including one triple-double and 13 steals across the four games. He's been unstoppable, and those numbers are even more impressive in the context of FIBA play, where the quarters are 10 minutes and individual scoring outbursts aren't as common.
Yes, some of the big NBA stars who could be in this tournament decided to skip it for various reasons. But if Luka takes this Slovenia team deep, it would be another notch on his increasingly long belt of accomplishments, and one he clearly takes seriously; winning for Slovenia obviously means a lot to him.
Lakers fans should be ecstatic watching Luka at EuroBasket
Rumors of a quicker Luka who prioritized his fitness this summer have been circulating for months, and we're already seeing the results of Luka's work this offseason. The 3-point shot isn't falling yet (he's 11-40 from deep) but the overall results have been scintillating. Lakers fans should be giddy watching Luka lead a team like this and envisioning him doing the same in his first full season with the Lakers this year.