Sky Sports coverage of the NBA continues on Sunday night with our latest Watchalong - join the Heat Check team from 8pm for Chicago Bulls @ Dallas Mavericks on the Sky Sports YouTube channel
Sunday 17 January 2021 06:54, UK
Forty-Eight hours after losing his latest match-up with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Dallas' Luca Doncic is back on the court as Europe's stars continue to take the league by storm.
The pride of European basketball went head to head on Friday as Giannis and Doncic served up the latest reminder that 'anything is possible' in the NBA.
Antetokonmpo came out on top in a 112-109 win and the Greek Freak has the slight upper hand over his European rival, who is emerging fast and is back on the big stage on Sunday night when the Mavericks host the Chicago Bulls.
In some ways it feels like Antetokounmpo has only just entered the league, but with two MVP trophies, a Defensive Player of the Year award, four All-Star appearances with four All-NBA selections and three All-Defensive Team honours, he has already amassed the type of plaudits it takes lengthy careers to achieve.
Even though he was drafted in 2013 as a skinny, shy, Greek-Nigerian from the streets of Athens, Antetokounmpo still feels young... because he is. At 26, he is probably two years away from entering his prime, yet he already has the body of a god in his native land, and is on his way to becoming one of the best European players in the NBA ever. But there is already another young talent from across the continent, who is sharpening his sword.
Luka Doncic is just 21. The Dallas Mavericks were spiralling for three seasons before he arrived, dragging an ageing European, Dirk Nowitzki, who probably should have left the league two seasons before he did. But when Doncic joined the NBA, the team increased its number of wins by nine more games in his first year, then the franchise returned to the playoffs last season.
Despite his youth, the Slovenian had already played on one the biggest of stages, against adults and former NBA talent in probably the second toughest league in the world. Suiting up for Real Madrid, he became the youngest EuroLeague MVP ever and led his team to a EuroLeague title. Some US pundits still were not convinced by the international prospect, but he has clearly shown he is the best player from the 2018 NBA Draft.
The tale of the tape on these European heavyweights is impressive, but the 2018-19 and 2019-20 NBA MVP’s sheen had worn off slightly coming into this season. Antetokounmpo has reached a stage where being a dominant force in the regular season is not enough. After losing in the Eastern Conference Finals in that first year, then being knocked out by the Miami Heat in the Orlando bubble, people want more.
His basic numbers have taken a dip this year and he has gone from averaging 29 points, 13 rebounds and five assists with one block and one steal last season, to 26, 10, five, one and one so far. It’s still early, so he could have a big game and that would change his averages entirely. Because we are barely 10 games in, it is hard to read too much into advanced stats as it takes longer for them to bear much resemblance to what is going on in the game.
Regardless, if Antetokounmpo’s numbers are down, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It is not like they need him to rest - head coach Mike Budenholzer has never played him too many minutes - but the team needs to learn to be productive without him. He is so integral to the Bucks’ offense that the team scored five points more when he was on the court last season, and allowed eight more points when he was off the court.
This becomes a problem in the playoffs because an opponent is able to take away your greatest strength. The best teams tend to have multiple options to ensure it is not a stable diet of the same thing over the course of seven games. In the playoffs last year, when Antetokounmpo was playing, the team scored 110 points per 100 possessions - about five points fewer than the regular season - and the point difference when he is on the court becomes a more negligible +2 for the Bucks.
Simply put, teams figure out him and the Bucks, and Milwaukee did not have a margin for error. But letting new point guard Jrue Holiday manage the offense, even if it has not been as successful as it could have been so far, should help the team in the playoffs by having multiple offensive weapons confident in a tweaked system.
The European hype around Doncic was well deserved when he entered the NBA. On his way to a Rookie of the Year season, he averaged 21 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and it increased to 28, nine and eight as a sophomore before his Mavericks were knocked out of the playoffs by the Los Angeles Clippers.
He is safely the best player from his draft, but nobody is really judging Doncic on whether or not he should have been selected higher - that time has gone. We are now expecting great things from the young Slovenian. There are requirements from the Mavericks, as they need to improve the roster for him to be successful, but Doncic still needs to refine certain areas of his game.
He began his career as a passable three-point shooter. A percentage of 32 was not great but passable for a rookie who had a usage rate of 30.5 - the 11th highest in the league that year. Last year, he pulled up for three off the dribble 36 per cent of the time and hit 31 per cent of them - not good. He has started this season shooting 27 per cent from distance - yikes.
This is troubling, because his team does not seem to be much better. They are currently a sixth seed in the Western Conference, while his usage rate leads the NBA and he has a career high turnover rate.
Hopefully the return of Kristaps Porzingis on Wednesday will help going forward, because a supporting cast of Tim Hardaway Jr, Willie Cauley-Stein, James Johnson, Trey Burke, Maxi Kleber, Josh Richardson, Jalen Brunson, Dorian Finn-Smith, Boban Marjanovic and Wes Iwundu does not look like a championship contender on paper. They are all useful players, but against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Brooklyn Nets, the Clippers and the Philadelphia 76ers, the Mavericks have one top player, and the perennial threat of a second star is dependent on Porzingis maintaining good health for any decent stretch.
Last season, the 7ft 3in Latvian had 10 games in which he scored 30 points or more, but the Mavericks only won two of them. His success has not necessarily translated into wins, but injuries meant he and Doncic only played 47 games together - during which Dallas won 59 per cent of their games, the best two-man winning percentage of any duo on the team.
Porzingis has only played one game this season, a win earlier this week against the Charlotte Hornets, after having knee surgery last year. Head coach Rick Carlisle said they would monitor his center’s play and energy rather than instruct a time limit, and Porzingis ended up playing 21 minutes, and scored 16 points with four rebounds and two blocks.
Meanwhile, having a second threat on the court meant Doncic couldn’t be pressured by the opposition’s defense as much as he has been in this early season. He scored 34 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and dished out nine assists while shooting 55 per cent from three and still having energy to steal the ball twice and block two shots.
At this stage of the season, with so many players learning new systems and returning from injuries - not to mention the impossible-to-predict line-ups due to Covid-19 protocols - match-ups are hardly likely determine the best player.
But the fact that two European superstars are leading two of the most exciting teams in the NBA shows what progress is being made
Not many long-time fans of the US-based league would have predicted the two best players being international imports in 2021, but Carlisle said: “When I realised that I’d actually made the NBA, I realised that anything is possible in this league.”
Whatever happens whenever they face each other it will be just another instalment that will see these young, future powerhouses meeting not just for their teams, but for the pride of NBA Europe.
