2020-2021 MAVS NEWS: Archived

[BasketballJones41]

I agree Luka faded every season up to now. The judgement is still out on this one, imho. Last two games Luka played well, even according to his standards. Even against Philly defense. As far as fading - the way Mavs use him has something to do with it. You can't expect a player to carry such a weight to not wear down. So this is certainly not 100 % on him. Unfair to say so.

Luka has improved every season as a player, so I think it is very unfair to preach about work ethic. This goes even before speaking about extraordinary circumstances of the last offseason. 

This is not about making excuses for him. It is about having reasonable expectations and being fair about players.

Completely agree. The Luka hate is getting weird. It’s like we didn’t learn anything with Dirk. He’s asked to carry an enormous burden and we can see clearly every time he’s out or on the bench just how little help he truly gets from our other guards and wings. And it doesn’t help that KP misses so often. And once you get past KP none of our other bigs are very helpful offensively to him. Maxi provides spacing but Luka still has to work his ass off to set those shots up for him. He’s been pretty good so far at identifying weaknesses in his game and improving on them each year. So if conditioning is a problem I fully expect him to fix it this off-season. This Luka situation is starting to remind me so much of how some fans treated Dirk. I just don’t understand it.