By Jon de la Presa
Coming from an exhibition in Budapest with Real Madrid´s u16 team, there were big expectation in Vitoria about what Luka Doncic ('99) would be able to do playing against his own generation. The eslovenian super-talented kid didn´t dissapoint anyone who has been in Baskonia´s Sports City during these three days of competition of the prestigious Minicopa Tournament, that celebrated his 10th anniversary. Ten years since Wolves´ pass-first point guard Ricky Rubio, played and amazed everybody during the tourney in Sevilla. A big star, and an special kid had borned.
This time, ten years later, Minicopa has brought another special player, the most talented guy who has played the championship since Ricky Rubio ('90). You are going to hear this name a lot of times from now, because if everything goes right, and he still follows the correct path, a new star is on the way. The slovenian sensation, averaged in 4 games and just playing 22 minutes, 24.5 points, 13 rebounds, 4 assists and 6 steals for a total of 38.5 pts of efficency, all are tournament highs.
The 13 year-old guard was absolutely dominating in every single game, being incredibly effective in every part of the game, despite playing at 50% of his possibilities because he didn´t need to do any special effort to be such a dominating player due to his terrible skill-set and his above average physical conditions. In that terms, have to say that he´s still skinny in a early stage of his physical improvement, but with a body that shows very promising conditions for the future, specially with a quite large wingspan that allows him to defende at this stage without doing any special effort, stealing lots of ball with that wingspan, his quick hands and IQ.
Defensively he´s quick enough to be a decent defender in the future, reads specially well the defending lines, stealing a lot of balls in these situations but right now he doesn´t do any effort in there. Not being agressive and reserving all his energy for the offensive side. He has been upright in his stance during all the tourney and didn´t show any deffensive tool apart from his ability for reading passing lines and using his wingspan, in which showed some promissing quickness. Luka has been the best rebounder of a tournament where there wasn´t any big player. Always went for the offensive and defensive rebound, where he was almost unstopable with his better physical skills and good intuition for the rebound. Offensivily it was a constant him missing the shoot and grabing his own board for finishing easily.
In offense he can play in most of situations, with the court open and in static situations, where he feels specially comfortable with the ball in his hands, feeling a little lost sometimes while he hadn´t the ball in his hands, not moving a lot off the ball, being so static.
He has brilliant ball handling, but sometimes he turned the ball over in some situations due to soft hands as a result of not playing at full of his possibilities and effort. He has a lot of solutions to skip rivals in the transition and when he drives to the rim, technically perfect in his handling, fakes and footwork, that allows him to change rhythm and direction very easily. Can finish with both hands near the rim, showing good body control and touch while finishing in contact, specially in the right side, drawing a lot of fouls and and one situations. Seems to have two go-to moves while driving, one is a very quick spin when he is driving his right hand to attack the left side, and the other one is his finesse euro-step. Not a selfish player, Doncic, shows great court vision, either in transition or in half court, where he´s very good creating for himself or his teammates, playing from one on one and pick and roll situations, with his vision a creativity to make good passes for the inside players or for the shooters with good kick outs. Decission-making is good for a player in such an early age of developing. He´s player that understands the game in advanced level, with great IQ that allows him to control the pace in every single moment. One of the most repetitive plays in the tournament has been Doncic catching the defensive rebound and doing the one-handed quarterback 20 meter pass to one of his mates.
In terms of shooting he didn´t force so much bacause of his evident superiority in all aspects of the game which made his game so vertical to the rim. His release point is quite low, but executes the shoot quite quick and despite being quite irregular right now has good upside in this area, being quite effective shooting after dribling, with good range.
Doncic it´s one the most promissing young stars in the Europe, a great combination of skills, physical abilities and IQ that is called to be the future of Real Madrid. He plays u18 basketball level against u14 kids, who is something already impressive. Madrid and his coach Pablo Laso has a lot of hope in him and he said, that he´s that most talented kid has ever seen.
