Luka Doncic made his Los Angeles Lakers debut in a blowout win over the Utah Jazz. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni react to Luka’s night, the weird situation in Dallas, and the All Star injury replacements. Then, the Guardian’s national NBA writer Claire De Lune joins the show from Crypto to set the scene, discuss Luka’s introduction to Lakers fans, and the team’s playoff ceiling.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni & Claire De LuneExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson MoodySubmit your questions to The Athletic NBA Daily mailbag: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5939460/2024/11/25/nba-podcast-mailbag-athletic-daily/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What happened during Luka Doncic's Lakers debut?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, Luka is a Laker. Officially, he made his debut. We're going to do a deep dive on that with Claire DeLune from The Guardian. Something weird is happening in Dallas. We're going to talk about that a little bit. And we've got all-star replacements, which means somebody else got snubbed. Good morning, everybody.
Good morning, S. Before we get started, guys, I wanted to tell you guys about Connection Sports Edition, a new game for sports fans from The Athletic. S, you told me you had a chance to give it a test drive. It's a daily dose of trivia, and apparently it's a lot of fun.
How is it? I, first of all, I love connections generally. Uh, me and my wife play it all the time. So having a sports version of this, where we can kind of just rack our brain over different categories is exciting for me to do. So yeah, shout out to that connections. Very, very cool. That,
Chapter 2: What is the situation with the Dallas Mavericks?
That's big news. We got that today. You guys can check that out at theathletic.com slash connections. So go and do that. Normally on a day like this, we would be just starting to show hot and heavy talking about Luka Doncic, you know, Laker. But we got to go to his old team. The Dallas Mavericks. Number one, they were involved in kind of a crazy game against Sacramento Kings.
They lost in overtime on a DeMar DeRozan beautiful floater where he just splits the defense with a master class game from him. Yeah. Absolutely. Ugly game down the stretch. They lose Daniel Gafford. So more bad news. They lose him to a knee injury. We're not sure yet how bad that is or, you know, how much time he's going to miss.
But, you know, already without Anthony Davis after, you know, almost one game. And obviously they traded away Maxi Klaba.
Derek Lively.
So luckily, Dwight Powell, still a Maverick. But we got to talk about what happened at the game. The Mavericks. We're doing the Jumbotron thing, and they find a guy in the crowd, and he mouths on the Jumbotron, fire Nico. Of course, Nico Harrison, the Mavericks GM who everyone's blaming for trading away Luka Doncic. We had the huge protest at the arena, but the arena was packed. Fans were there.
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Chapter 3: Why were fans ejected at the Mavericks game?
They were loud. They seemed like they were into the game. Pretty great. Great crowd, too. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of weird. A couple of fans were actually ejected. The one fan who mouths fire Nico on the Jumbotron and another fan who apparently was wearing a T-shirt. And it took a while for the Mavericks to, you know, answer issue a statement. But as you have their statement in front of you.
yeah uh shout out to christian clark uh from the athletic who who got this statement from the mavs basically saying that in the first incident the guests brought in a sign that broke the following rule of conduct it basically was about you know explicit language using clothes and whatnot and then in the second incident the fan wore a t-shirt that also broke the rules and was also intoxicated intoxicated disruptive and uncooperative
all listed as things you can't do in an NBA arena. So that is the situation in Dallas. I mean, I don't think it's going to get any better from here, to be honest with you.
Well, I'm not done with how bad it is because after the game, Jason Kidd just did not address the media.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I can't remember that happening at any point with a head coach.
It might be the first time.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The Dallas Mavericks are kind of on a speed run right now. I mean, if you think about this, two weeks ago, We were talking about the Mavericks. If they're healthy, this is a team that has a chance to make the finals again. We thought that they matched up really, really well against the Thunder. We just hadn't seen them healthy. And now, all of a sudden, it's... I don't know.
Are they trying to tank... their fandom? Are they trying to make everyone in Dallas angry? I'm not sure what the motivation here is.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Luka joining the Lakers?
Dirk didn't show up for Anthony Davis's debut, but Dirk was out in L.A. for a Luca showing up, you know, Showtime Lakers. And, you know, hey, I just want to we're going to talk with Claire DeLune after the break. And so, you know, she's there and kind of talk with the vibes. But just quickly about the game. Look, they're playing the jazz, so they're just getting their cardio in. But yeah.
You know, and Luka had a minutes restriction, but you can see the vision. I mean, listen, man, it's it's you're taking LeBron James, one of the greatest basketball players ever play. And you're putting him with Luka Doncic, who is this childhood prodigy who we all expect to be one of the greatest ever. And what do you know? They were both making plays for other people.
Awesome. It was really fun to watch offensively. I thought the passing, like the ball was flying throughout the game. And honestly, like you said, it was the jazz. So you have to take it with a grain of salt. But like the way the ball was zipping, it shows you the offensive potential of this Lakers team.
The fact that Luca had a pretty mediocre offensive game himself, he wasn't hitting his three point shots, wasn't really getting to his spots, looked rusty because he had missed six weeks of basketball. But I think overall, you look at the
playmaking chops of all these guys and and the other guy I gotta mention is Austin Reeves who has been playing unreal basketball especially as of late obviously had that career night against Indiana and now you look at a guy who is stepping into a role next to LeBron and and Luca where he's like all right I will get all the easy buckets I possibly can playing next to these guys but
I can take advantage of it as a tertiary score. I'm also a good playmaker, so I can hunt out situations in the second unit. It just feels like a great opportunity for Reeves. And so like offensively, the potential of that trio is through the roof. We'll see how it looks defensively because that's the question.
But when he plays with LeBron and, and with Luca, he gets to be like James Worthy, right? Finish plays, make a play here and there when he has to. And then he gets to run those second units. I mean, there were times where both LeBron and Luca were on the bench and Hey, there's Austin Reeves doing his thing. So everything is just working out great for the Lakers.
What do you know?
It just somehow seems to happen. We also we got some injury replacements for the All-Star game. Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to miss the All-Star game. Trey Young gets the nod to replace him as it seems fairly uncontroversial. I actually think Trey probably should have made it.
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Chapter 5: Who were the All-Star injury replacements?
And that's sort of what this is all about, right? Like we all sort of envisioned, oh, wow, Luca to LeBron is going to be something we'll be watching for the next few months as the Lakers make this push. What do you think about what that offense is going to be capable of?
I mean, for me, I'm just like chomping at the bit. As someone who's been watching this team, first of all, I think something that's been kind of underreported in all of this is they've been awesome for basically since Christmas. They've been incredible with AD, without AD, with LeBron, without LeBron. So they've just been really clicking. And the team has incredible chemistry right now.
And Luka got to come be a part of that. So that's worth mentioning. But I don't really know. Obviously, the defensive issues are what they are, but... I don't know how you guard Austin Reeves, Luka Doncic, and LeBron James. And you have to have the most incredibly versatile, you know, fast moving perimeter defenders.
Yeah.
You know, in the league, like I can only think of a handful of teams that even really have a chance. You double one of them. You've got two others out there that could absolutely cook and like all of them can pass. All of them can handle the ball. So I think it's going to be incredible. And obviously the LeBron Luca two man game is already amazing. So.
Was there anything from JJ or, or Luca tonight post game that they mentioned sort of the offensive fit and what they see potential wise with this team?
I think they were mostly just talking about sort of like the offense in general and how it's looking. I think JJ's been really careful to sort of give everybody some shine in this time where Luka's getting all this attention and credit. Yeah. But I think that just the offense in general is looking really good. The ball is moving.
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Chapter 6: What was the atmosphere like at Luka's debut?
And like I said, you've got three elite playmakers out there, some of the highest basketball IQs that have ever touched a basketball court. Mm-hmm. I think the offense is destined for success. The defense is where they might run into some issues.
But I will say that having someone to take more of that offensive load off of LeBron, off of Boston Reeves, kind of opens the door for them to have a higher ceiling on their defense. And I think you've already started to see that.
So, obviously, Luca has been injured. He'd been out of the lineup when he was in Dallas for a while. He comes back, looks a little rusty. His first jumper hits front rim, you know, doesn't score a ton of points in the game. You know, the shot's not all the way back yet.
What in his postgame, what did he have to say about how it felt to be like out on the court here after, you know, but basically like eight, nine days after the trade?
Yeah, I mean, he said he was rusty, for sure. He said it's the longest that he's ever gone without playing basketball since he's been a pro, which I thought was interesting. But yeah, but he said that, you know, once it tipped off, once he was back in the game, that it was like New Jersey, new situation, it's still basketball.
And basketball is what he does, and it's what he's always done since he was a kid. So I think... The weight of the new team and the debut was definitely present and there were nerves there in the beginning. But as soon as there's actual basketball being played, I think that's his comfort zone and that's where he thrives.
So I think he was able to sort of get back to himself in a way, which is really cool.
Claire, you've covered this team for the last couple of seasons now, and like LeBron is no longer the guy on the team. And it's crazy to say that because they it's Luca that is the guy. And so do you there feel that there's it is a feeling of like, should they try and prioritize both of them? Is there this sort of riff that could possibly happen there?
And do you feel like LeBron is working to appease that? He had that don't fit in, fit out quote that's going viral. There's like the him allowing him to play and be introduced late in the starting lineup or be last in the starting lineup. Does any of that play into this idea? Or is LeBron actually trying to make things work with Luka?
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