Luka Doncic ‘Changing A Lot About Himself’ This Offseason

The acquisition of Luka Doncic has completely changed the trajectory of the Los Angeles Lakers both in the short and long term. The guard is clearly one of the best players in the NBA today and the entire basketball world was truly shocked that the Dallas Mavericks would even deal him away.

In the aftermath of the deal, questions about Luka’s conditioning came out from the Mavericks side as that seemed to be the main reason why the franchise was ready to move on. And while that seemed blasphemous considering the amount of minutes he had played while leading them to the NBA Finals in 2024, it was regularly a discussion point.

Now in his first offseason with the Lakers, it sounds as if Doncic is committed to improving himself in every way and that includes his conditioning as well. Jason Gallagher, producer of the “Mind the Game” podcast with LeBron James and Steve Nash and noted Mavericks fan, recently appeared on The Dumb Zone and said that he has heard from multiple people that Luka is cleaning slate and changing a lot about himself this summer:

“I have heard from folks that are pretty honest about the conditioning stuff or whatever, that Luka has already begun to clean slate, starting anew. He is already in this mindset of changing a lot about himself. Now, I’ve heard it before. But not from specific people that have been critical of him.”

There are a lot of ways this can be taken, but it makes sense that Doncic, now in a new city and beginning a new era of his career, is focused on changing things that he feels needs to be changed. There is no denying his desire to have the greatest success and win a championship with the Lakers and this offseason is the perfect opportunity for him to turn over a new leaf.

Whether it is conditioning, diet, certain on-court skills or anything else, Doncic is apparently ready to take some steps and will come in even better next season once training camp begins.

Lakers’ Austin Reaves emphasizes need to ‘grow together’ alongside Luka Doncic and LeBron James

Of course it takes an entire team to win a championship and for the Lakers, everything is built around the trio of Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and LeBron James. They really didn’t have too much time to build that chemistry together and Reaves feels that the trio continuing to grow together is extremely important.

“Just continuing to grow together,” he said. “Obviously they’re unbelievable basketball players and the more time we spend, not with just them, but the whole unit, you’re just gonna become more cohesive, more together, know exactly what you’re gonna do every possession when things get tough, you’re rolling with how you want to play the game. I thought we did a really good job of that in the regular season and we just didn’t play good enough in this series.”