Luka Doncic Throwback Scouting Report
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Luka Doncic Throwback Scouting Report
Are there any lessons we can take away from examining the last great European prospect before Victor Wembanyama?
EuroLeague MVP.
EuroLeague First-Team.
Liga ACB MVP.
All-Liga ACB First Team.
EuroLeague Champion.
All these accolades came upon Luka Doncic in 2018. And yet he was still not a shoo-in to become the first overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. A 6’7” playmaking wing with elite scoring tools, Doncic fell to third overall and was not considered the top prospect on many mainstream boards at the time.
Our ability as a draft community has come a long way in terms of scouting international prospects since then. There’s a greater understanding and acceptance of how talented European players are — the hubris around domestic talent seems to be diminishing. Doncic is surely one of the biggest to break down barriers for pre-draft evaluations and garner respect on how good a teenager must be to contribute on a high-level professional club.
There also feels like a greater understanding in public spaces about what NBA teams look for and where the game is trending. More size, more skill, positional versatility, shot-making all over. Offensive engines with creativity and a high feel for the game. Athletic and statistical indicators that are more reliable determinants of success.
Going back to watch Luka Doncic’s film with Real Madrid is part of a bigger project we are undertaking this Winter, but was a necessary first step to put into context some of the top names in this class like Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson. Doncic, aside from LaMelo Ball, is the last top-pick contender we’ve seen to play his pre-draft ball outside of the confines of college.
He’s also the one we likely missed on the most.
Back in 2018, Doncic had all these accolades and clearly featured a resume that would inspire confidence for the next level. Yet he was rarely seen as a number-one on draft boards, let alone a consensus number one. Mike Schmitz of ESPN rated him fourth on his board. The Ringer placed him third. Despite our lack of access to film, we had him second overall.
Well, we finally got access to his film this Fall and went back to watch all offensive clips and about 14 full games from his time with Real Madrid during the MVP season of 2017-18. We published the clips in a Throwback Scouting Report, but it’s the written takeaways that are most meaningful.
Doncic was a prodigious scorer at a young age. His feel for when to score and how to score was always so impressive. He passed at a high level, kept his dribble alive, rarely made mental errors creating out of ball screens and had the size to see over the top of defenses. That balance and IQ was notable at the time; whether an error on our part of from a general manager in Phoenix or Sacramento, it should have been obvious that this skill set is more important than a franchise-caliber big man.
Critiques about Doncic’s game came down to the lack of elite athleticism, essentially questioning whether he could replicate what he was doing on an NBA court. The NBA is more well-spaced than the European game due to the defensive three-seconds call, the importance of corner 3-point shooters to almost every offense, and an at-the-time trend of teams going smaller in late-game situations. Even if Doncic ceded some small points athletically, the translation to NBA basketball could offset some of those factors. It feels easy to say that in retrospect due to where the game has gone and how well Luka has adjusted to the league. But to do so also writes off Luka’s ability to get better/ bigger/ faster/ stronger as an athlete. After all, he was only 18 and doing this among men. I feel like we generally discounted how effective he’d be when he was one of the men.
We are likely on the verge of seeing another European prospect dominate professional basketball in a similar way. Victor Wembanyama has been laughably good to start the year for Metropolitans in France; while the competition level isn’t the same as the ACB and EuroLeague schedule that Doncic faced, it’s still at a level of physicality and polish greater than that of college.
Wemby’s dominance is quite different. He relies on the intersection of skill and elite physical tools to obliterate opponents. His physical tools still inspire questions, many of which seem legitimate right now.
Will he stay healthy with that thin of a frame?
Guys his height always seem to deteriorate due to injury. Should that be taken into consideration?
Can he add any more muscle, or will he always be this skinny?
Those questions don’t seem to be as seriously damaging to Wembanyama’s draft stock as the pre-draft musings about Doncic’s athleticism seemed to be. Perhaps that’s due to the novel nature of Wembanyama’s game, making it easier to root for him to overcome those question marks simply because we’ve never seen someone like him before and therefore want him to succeed. Maybe scouts are learning from Luka’s success and not letting those questions get in the way of taking a productive and dominant player with a proven track record against pros.
You may notice a similar progression for Wembanyama’s scouting video: many of the questions are about his physical tools despite an overwhelming amount of evidence that he can dominate just the way he is.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two is on the defensive end. Doncic’s pre-draft film was never that encouraging on defense. While the argument could’ve been made (and likely was) that his offense was so special it could more than make up for his individual defensive flaws, we’ve seen those concerns on defense play out with the Dallas Mavericks.
Wembanyama doesn’t have similar concerns. In fact, his defense may be more impactful and rare than his offense. That ultimately may be why Victor is going to be so hard to unseat as the top prospect: it’s been since LeBron James that we’ve seen a teenager with this combination of elite offensive skill and dominant defensive impact. Regardless of what we learn from analyzing Luka’s offensive dominance, there’s no comparing the two on the defensive end.
In reality, the main takeaway from Doncic’s film rewind may have to do with a prospect other than Wembanyama. What we’ve seen from Doncic is that, even against different pro competition, the translation of dominance offensively at a young age has been fairly apples-to-apples. The pre-draft role Luka played is eerily similar to the one he now fulfills in Dallas, a testament to how special of a scorer you must be to have an entire pro team’s playbook formatted around you at 18 years old.
That is, to me, most indicative of pro success for a guy like Scoot Henderson. Still at 18, this is year two for Henderson with the G-League Ignite. Not only is he killing it from a scoring and playmaking standpoint statistically, he’s doing it consistently and with an entire pro team catered around him.
Doncic was successful enough in his system to win games and to garner MVP awards. Scoot may not be the G-League Most Valuable Player at season’s end, but he’ll be close. As for win totals, Scoot is playing alongside other prospects in a league where no other team is that young and inexperienced. That isn’t to say that if his teammates were older the Ignite would be the top team in the G-League by default. But it doesn’t seem reasonable to dock Henderson for losing games without mentioning that caveat.
The top of the 2023 draft class was always seen as prolific, and thus far they have not been a disappointment. Going back and watching Luka Doncic’s film with Real Madrid gave me plenty to think about for applying scoring ability demonstrated by non-college prospects. There seems to be a pretty common trend: scoring volume and scoring consistency in a dominant fashion are unlikely to miss.