5 takeaways from Luka Doncic’s performance vs. Anadolu Efes

The 2017-18 Euroleague season got underway yesterday, meaning that this was our first time seeing 2018 NBA Draft prospect Luka Doncic play in a continental cup game since April. After his performance in Eurobasket for title-winning Slovenia, many wanted to see how he would carry that performance into the Euroleague season.

Real Madrid is set up for Doncic to take a major leap, as he is one of three players (alongside Argentinian Facundo Campazzo and Frenchman Fabian Causeur) tasked with picking up the scoring slack left by Sergio Llull after his ACL injury. Llull is a top-three player in the world outside of the NBA, and he’s no small piece to have to replace. The 18-year old Slovenian phenom has a hard job, and we got to see his first attempt at filling it.

So far, so good. Doncic came off the bench for Madrid against Turkish club Anadolu Efes, but he played 26 minutes, and finished with a fantastic performance — 27 points on 9-of-14 shooting, four rebounds, and four assists — as Madrid cruised to an 88-74 road victory in their opener. Doncic led Real in scoring, and registered a new Euroleague career high in points, besting his trio of 17-point performances from last season. In doing so, he demonstrated some improvements that create more excitement for his potential as a player who could go in the top three of next year’s NBA Draft. It’s one game, but let’s see what we can find in the film that could identify some larger trends that we could see this season.

Real Madrid wanted the ball in Doncic’s hands in crucial possessions

Who was going to take over late-quarter offensive creation duties from Llull was a big question for how Real Madrid was going to operate this year. Llull is notorious for taking those shots, clearing everyone out and creating a late bucket with his driving and pull-up shooting ability. Coach Pablo Laso’s first solution is apparently, “Llull ISOs, but Luka doing it.”

Doncic got several end of the clock possessions in this game, and Madrid players looked to single him out for these possessions. I counted five possessions where Doncic was the primary ball-handler on a possession that started with under 10 seconds left on the shot clock, and they resulted in eight Doncic points, one foul drawn, and one assist. He drove twice towards the rim, but the other three possessions were reminiscent of vintage Llull — a full-speed attack off a screen, stop on a dime, and step back jumper, against a pretty long defender in Ricky Ledo.

You’d like to see Doncic going towards the rim a little more – -NBA defenders will sniff out the step back if that’s all that’s coming — but him getting these possessions is very valuable in helping us assess his primary scoring value in the NBA. And if he performs like he did today, that’s a good sign, and helps illustrate our second point.

Doncic’s confidence is a legitimate asset

Campazzo, a 26-year old veteran, really struggled to make an impact in his first game. The Argentinian noticeably attempted to dictate pace, to the point where he almost seemed like he was forcing too much, taking wild shots and having a few turnovers where teammates weren’t expecting passes. I mention this because the contrast between Campazzo and Doncic leading the offense was fairly stark. Doncic was always calm, collected, and measured with his decision-making on offense — his passes had purpose and he was able to pick spots a little bit better than his more cavalier performance at Eurobasket. He only had two turnovers in this game as a result.

It takes an immense amount of confidence to perform as well as Doncic did today, on a team that’s breaking in new parts on the fly, with the force multiplier of being 18 years old and doing this for a team with championship expectations. It gets redundant to talk about with Doncic, but you can’t lose sight of how crazy it is that he got those end of quarter opportunities and looked like he was taking control in those situations for the millionth time. That’s what separates Doncic from the pack of top-level prospects right now — he has the mental edge. In a high-pressure moment, there’s no hesitancy or guessing as to what he’s doing in that situation. The next level for him is consistency of execution (which we can’t prove quite yet in this season), but he looks ready for how old he is.

Doncic had defensive success against NBA-level athletes

Efes isn’t a perfect team to check for progression of team defense, which is the money-maker when it comes to how well he’s prepared for life in the NBA. The Turkish club is very isolation-heavy in the backcourt, and they didn’t put Doncic in many high-stress situations where he had to make decisions off the ball. However, what we did get to see was how Doncic handled NBA-level athletes. Former Maverick Ricky Ledo and Erick McCollum, the brother of C.J. McCollum, aren’t NBA-level lead guards, but they both have NBA frames and athleticism that can give European guards problems. Doncic did a fairly solid job on Ledo overall when checking him, including this nice example of feeding the driver into help (Ayon fouled, but that’s more on Ayon than Doncic):

Doncic’s footwork isn’t great here — he is too jumpy, and ends up with his feet shifted in a way that allows Ledo to begin a blow-by before he recovers. But the sense of where his fellow defender is shows here, and he also has the strength to dislodge Ledo at the rim and force him to readjust, allowing the slow-footed Ayon to complete his rotation. Doncic is getting better at using his frame as a weapon in one-on-one problems, and that is promising after he looked a little frail on this end at times last year.

Luka Doncic’s physical maturation is apparent

Another thing we forget because we’re already desensitized to the idea of a 17-year old playing professional basketball last year — scouts may have overplayed the seriousness of Doncic’s lack of strength, particularly on defense. As we mentioned above, Doncic looked much better one-on-one because he could wall off the rim from his opponent, and the strength gain he’ll get from simply reaching physical maturity will be something to follow this season. In this game, it manifested itself in those few chances against Ledo, and also in rebounding, where Doncic solidified a trend we saw in Eurobasket — he is a really solid technical rebounder, and his motor lets him attack much larger players and come away with the ball, just because he’s competing for it harder:

Doncic is a 6-foot-7 combo guard that might lead his team in rebounding in multiple games this year, which is relevant because Real Madrid has four former NBA players in its frontcourt. This is where we will see that physical maturity shine most, but it might help him both in getting to the rim and preventing opponents from doing so in a better fashion than what we saw last year.

Next: Will the Timberwolves finally be able to win close games?

The passing is still immaculate

There’s no more words needed here.