The Mavericks slandered Luka Doncic for his conditioning after trading him to the Lakers, but his former teammates have since spoken up.
11-season NBA veteran Seth Curry played with Doncic during two seperate stints for the Mavs and claims he never saw an issue with the Slovenian star.
“From my vantage point, you knew what you were going to get from Luka,” Curry said, via Sporting News. “Practice, games, when the ball went up, you knew he was going to show up and be ready to play when he was healthy. I didn’t see any issues, really.”
He added, “He’s a great competitor. When practice came around and the ball went up and guys were ready to compete, he played as hard as anybody. One of the best competitors I’ve ever played with.”
Josh Green spent four seasons in Dallas and thought the Mavs playing up the ‘poor conditioning’ was a little much.
“At the end of the day, he’s played World Cups, he’s played Olympics, back-to-back-to-back years. You have to be in pretty good shape to be able to play that,” Green told Sporting News.
Green was impressed by Luka’s growth and maturity in the time he spent with him.
“I think for someone to be 24 years old and be able to take a team to the Finals, it’s impressive,” Green. “The last two years, he took a big leap being a leader. The guys really followed that.”
After the Luka former Mavericks executive Haralabos Voulgaris was baffled by the franchise’s move to question Doncic’s work ethic.
“This idea that he’s not a hard worker, I mean what do you think? This guy rolls out of bed and becomes the greatest offensive player aside from Nikola Jokic? That’s offensive. He wasn’t born with this ability,” Voulgaris said on The Dumb Zone.
“He works very very hard. He works on his craft. He developed the mid-range game. He developed all kinds of step-backs. That was not great when he came into the league. He developed the ability to play off ball with Kyrie, whereas before he always dominated the ball.”
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