Luka's trap

And Shai's world.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Luka Doncic picks up technical fouls more consistently than nearly every NBA player. He complains about non-calls that go uncalled against him. He complains about calls that are made against him. He gets invested and involved in plays he’s not involved. He’s demonstrative. He implies referees are being paid off.

(That one didn’t get him a technical foul, but did lead to a $35,000 fine.)

As someone who watches Luka Doncic play basketball a lot, it appears that Luka cannot control a fiery competitiveness and crosses the line too frequently. Given that he is his team’s best player no matter what team he’s on, his actions and reactions set a tone. With the Dallas Mavericks, if he is spending the game complaining to officials and sometimes getting disciplined for those complaints, it creates a culture of blame, of excuses, of determinism.

Do you believe that? That because Luka, the Mavericks’ best player, turns so quickly to complaint and even conspiracy when he doesn’t get a call he feels he should get, the Mavericks as a whole dip into a darker place in terms of how they see their fate as being outside their control? It’s unknowable, how much a culture of victimhood impacts a will to win. My position is that it’s not good.

And it appears to have manifested on the Slovenian national team. Whether he was correct or exaggerating, Luka began complaining to the refs in Slovenia’s quarterfinal game against Canada at the World Cup early and often. The game was tied at halftime, Slovenia was in it, the shooters around Luka were hitting (especially Klemen Prepelic), Luka was finding spaces and seams. He already had one tech for complaining, and he kept pushing and pushing after no-calls. To be fair, Dillon Brooks was in his shirt a lot, trying to push Luka further down the path to darkness. Notably, Brooks was the only player in the NBA with more technical fouls than Luka last season. Brooks trades in agitation and disruption — that’s where he picks up his sanctions. Luka’s far more often come from his laments to the whistleblower.

As the game appeared to slip out of reach, and after Brooks picked up a weird ejection for taunting after he’d picked up an unsportsmanlike foul earlier, Luka picked up a second tech for yelling at the ref from the seat of his pants after what appeared on replay to be a marginal non-call.

Even if Luka hadn’t been ejected there, Canada would have had a 5-on-4. Not for the first time in the game.

What struck me about watching this game having known the outcome (and that Luka didn’t survive all 40 minutes) is that you can see Luka’s frustration become the entire Slovenian team’s frustration.