LOS ANGELES — Luka Dončić couldn’t explain why the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t send a second player at him at the end of regulation.
“Yeah, I was a little bit surprised,” he said afterward.
The Lakers doubled Dončić most of the second half, and they had methodically erased the Dallas Mavericks’ lead, once 19 points, to go ahead by three with 11 seconds remaining. Seconds later, without that help defender coming, Dončić nailed a stepback 3-pointer that tied Thursday’s game. That shot forced overtime, which led to another OT, which led to the Mavericks’ 119-115 win.
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— Dallas Mavericks (@dallasmavs) January 13, 2023
“I’m kicking myself in the butt,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “We should’ve blitzed him.”
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Ham knows what Dončić can do. It was before a Christmas meeting between these two teams when he lamented that guarding Dončić is “a nightmare,” saying, “We don’t have the answers.” That’s language every coach in the league uses to describe the existential crisis Dončić imposes on defenders tasked with stopping him from scoring or setting up his teammates. And they’re descriptions that have long been employed to describe another player on the court on Thursday.
LeBron James, now in his 20th season, still commands this same sort of nightmarish respect from opponents. Seconds after the Lakers chose not to double Dončić, with a chance for the Lakers to win in regulation, Mavericks coach Jason Kidd made the decision to send another player at James. He passed out of it, teammate Troy Brown Jr. had a 3-point attempt blocked after an aggressive closeout, and off this game went to its first overtime period. It’s clear the 38-year-old James isn’t the preeminent force he once was; his 24-point performance on 9-of-28 shooting showed, at times, signs of his slow decline.
But James is perhaps a month away from breaking the NBA’s all-time scoring record, held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. After Thursday, he stands just 398 points away from the standard set in 1989. He’s someone Dončić has always admired from the moment Dončić started watching basketball.
Dončić says he doesn’t remember when he first started watching James; he was 4 years old when James made his NBA debut. For Dončić, he’s never known basketball without James being apart of it, dominating it, being its standard bearer. When Dončić first played against him his rookie season, back in 2018, he admits he was nervous. Now, he’s the only player who truly can be said to be following James’ same path.
No, really.
While Dončić is only halfway through his fifth season, he’s the only other player in NBA history, alongside James, to have 8,000 points and 2,000 assists within his first five seasons while being age 23 or younger. James finished his first five seasons averaging 27.3 points, 6.7 rebounds and 6.6 assists; Dončić currently has career averages of 27.4 points, 8.6 rebounds and 8.1 assists. There are many qualifiers for these statistics, of course, such as the legends of old beginning their careers at older ages and the league’s style of play being more conducive to gaudy statistical totals. Still, Dončić stands alone with James thus far.
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With James nearing the league’s most prominent record, it’s natural to wonder whether the only player currently keeping pace might one day find himself in the same situation. Even Dirk Nowitzki, the undisputed legend of Dončić’s own franchise, thinks about what Dončić could accomplish. “We hope Luka can break it,” Nowitzki said last month at his statue unveiling, referring to the NBA record he holds playing 21 seasons with the same franchise.
Nowitzki was only somewhat joking; after all, Dončić has already begun rewriting Nowitzki’s franchise records. Two days after Nowitzki said that, Dončić scored 60 points, surpassing Nowitzki’s franchise single-game scoring high of 54.
The James-Dončić comparisons would be reasonable even if they were only statistical, but they go far beyond that. They are two singular offensive forces the size of power forwards but with the skill set of point guards, ones who march to the rim as frequently as they laser passes to the corners. Dončić has looked up to James for as long as he’s known about him, which is as long as he’s known basketball.
“It’s just amazing to watch him, (in) his 20th season and what he’s doing,” Dončić said Thursday morning. “He’s just incredible. We barely see those things.”
Dončić wanted to be like James growing up. He has now become something akin to him, the closest facsimile that the league has seen since James entered the league. Because those things are true, it seems reasonable, perhaps even destined, that Dončić would also want to become what James is now. That the 23-year-old Dončić who’s mimicking the 23-year-old James will one day be a 38-year-old statesman commanding the same double teams, reaching for the same all-time records, perhaps even losing to the league’s next 23-year-old wunderkind.
Except Dončić, for all the similarities, isn’t sure he wants that.
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“I have no goals,” he said Thursday. “Twenty years, that’s a lot of years. I’m going to go to my farm.”
Dončić has repeated this line about his future Slovenian farm several times over the past month when asked about the all-time record James is on the verge of breaking. He doesn’t own that farm just yet, but one of his friends back in Slovenia does.
“(He has) milk, vegetables, cheese, everything,” Dončić said.
That’s the life he envisions for himself when he’s 38, not competing with some young buckaroo in their first few years in the league, not even if he’s the legend to whom the player is being compared. For Dončić, he can’t even fathom being in this league long enough to accomplish what James is soon expected to.
“If you’re saying me, there’s no way, because I’m not playing that much,” Dončić said last month when someone began to ask him about that scenario.
Because sports breeds comparisons — we spend every offseason relitigating the league’s all-time best players and every postseason asking how wins and losses could affect players’ legacies — it’s natural to imagine Dončić’s Jamesian career thus far to be played in a similar manner. Dončić has accomplished enough that it’s not ridiculous to envision that. But what James has done to soon achieve his ultimate place atop the league’s scoring list isn’t something that happened by talent alone. It’s a grand commitment James made — even within the context of the commitments every single professional athlete makes with their bodies, times and lives — that allowed him to continue doing at 38 something that he began doing in this league at 18.
“You’ve got to hold up your body,” Dončić said. “You’ve got to play every year — not every game, but a lot of games at the top level, which is really hard.”
Dončić has plenty more he wants to achieve, of course. There are championships and awards he wants to earn. But the comparisons that he has already earned, to childhood figures of his like James, are no longer paths he wants or needs to mimic.
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Dončić has legitimately reached a level in this sport that has earned him this like-for-like juxtaposition, at least at this stage of his career. What he does with that now, and where he goes from here, is up to him. Even if that means he eventually chooses sowing seeds and herding sheep over a continued pursuit of rings and records.
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(Top photo of LeBron James and Luka Dončić: Adam Pantozzi / NBAE via Getty Images)
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