2018 NBA Draft prospect Luka Doncic, as told by a bored 10th grader

In the lull of August, basketball fans want something to get excited about. Often that means getting a gauge of the top NBA Draft prospects for the coming year. This year, that means we get to talk about [quickly scans old Draft Express mocks] Luka Doncic! He plays in Europe but seems to be who the scouts like.

We felt we had to get in on the August hype train, but our senior European correspondent couldn’t be reached. Instead, we brought in a suitable replacement, a bored 10th grader fresh out of a 6th period chemistry class. He had visited Draft Express before, so he seemed qualified.

The 2017 NBA Draft occurred last June, and a new NBA Draft will take place in June 2018. This will be the 2018 NBA Draft. Each draft has players who will go at the top, and these top players are exciting. The 2018 NBA Draft will feature many of these players. One of them is Luka Doncic, who plays shooting guard. I have heard he is exciting, and want to tell you about how exciting he is.

Doncic is like the other top players in this class, because he is exciting. Meanwhile, he is different from them too. He is different because he is not from the United States. Marvin Bagley, Michael Porter, who are the other top players, are from the United States. This is common for top NBA Draft players. Doncic is different. He is from another country, called Slovenia. There are many interesting countries in the world today, and Slovenia is one of them. Slovenia’s capital is…

[awkwardly shuffles notes]

Lee-you…Ljubble…

[defeatedly scribbles “Ljubljana” on the whiteboard]

Doncic is from there.

Luka Doncic is also different from the rest of the top players in the 2018 NBA Draft like Bagley and Porter. These players will play college basketball in the NCAA. Doncic will not play college basketball. He will play basketball in Spain. Spain is another interesting country in the world today. They have a basketball league called the ACB, which I think stands for “A Cool Basketball” League. I have not watched this league, but it probably isn’t as good as the NCAA. An interesting fact is that most NBA Draft players come from the NCAA, not the ACB. So the ACB can’t be as good.

Doncic plays for Real Madrid, who are the best team in the ACB. He plays with Cristiano Ronaldo there.

Luka Doncic is 6-foot-7, meaning he plays shooting guard. He is good at a lot of things, which is why he is exciting. He can shoot, he can pass and he can run a pick-and-roll, which is a very good basketball play. These are all things that shooting guards are good at. In the NBA, the hope is that Doncic can do all of those things. If he can, he could become as good as Manu Ginobili, another good player who did not grow up in the United States.

But there are also problems with Doncic. He is exciting, and a top player, but he plays in the ACB. Can he be as good in the NBA as he is in the ACB? It is nearly impossible to say. Good players from Europe have been good in the NBA, but some good players from Europe have been bad in the NBA. This could mean he could be like Darko Milicic, who was good in Europe but bad in the NBA. Part of the problem is that Doncic is not very athletic. He may be athletic compared to you or me, but he is European, so he cannot be very athletic and he probably is not very good at defense. European NBA players are not very good at defense.

Next: Using neural networks to generate new NBA nicknames

Doncic is an exciting player, and he is a top player in the NBA Draft. He could be very good, but he could also be not good in the NBA. It will be hard to tell if he will be good before the NBA Draft because he does not play in the NCAA. Doncic is a mystery because of this. He is someone to keep an eye on in the 2018 NBA Draft, but if he does not play in the NCAA, he will remain a mystery.

Home/NBA