Luca Doncic is a promising Slovenian basketball player. From 2015 to 2018, he played for the Spanish basketball team Real Madrid. After that, Luca moved to the USA and began playing for the NBA club Dallas Mavericks. According to the results of the season 2018/2019, he was recognized as the best NBA rookie.
Early biography
Luka Doncic was born in 1999 in Ljubljana - the capital of Slovenia. His mother's name is Miriam Poterbin. In the past, she was a model and dancer, and now owns several beauty salons. Miriam’s husband and Luke’s father are Sasha Donchich. It is known that he was a basketball player, and then a basketball coach.
In 2008, the Luke family broke up. Parents began to live separately, while the boy remained with his mother. But at the same time, he did not stop talking with his father and, in fact, followed in his footsteps.
Basketball Luke began to practice at the age of seven. And when he turned eight, he became a member of the children's team of the Slovenian club Olympia. Moreover, from the very beginning, the coaches, seeing the exceptional abilities of Donchich, allowed him to play with older children. Ultimately, Donchich had to go through all the junior levels, and he always stood out from his peers.
He signed his first sports contract at the age of thirteen. And his first “adult” professional match was held on April 30, 2015 - Luca went on the floor in the Spanish basketball club Real Madrid. Moreover, in this match, he was undoubtedly the youngest player of Real Madrid - at that time he was 16 years old, 2 months and 2 days.
Soon enough, the fame of one of the main basketball talents of Europe was entrenched in him, and the Spanish newspaper "Marca" even called him "El Nino Maravilla" ("wonder boy").
Donchich took part in the “Real” in the FIBA Intercontinental Cup 2015 (and, by the way, this club became its owner that year). In addition, he three times while playing in Real Madrid, became the champion of Spain. And in the 2017/2018 season, Luca Doncic, as part of his Spanish team, became the winner of the Euroleague Cup.
Doncic at the NBA
At the 2018 NBA draft, Luca Doncic was initially selected by the Atlanta Hawks team. But the rights to the player ultimately passed to the Dallas Mavericks. On July 9, 2018, Donchich signed a four-year contract with this club for an impressive amount of $ 32.6 million. And immediately for the first season in the “Dallas” Donchich, in accordance with the terms of this contract, was supposed to receive 5.5 million dollars.
He wanted to play at the Dallas club number 7, but he was busy, and Donchich had to be content with the double-digit form 77.
It is also worth noting that before the start of the NBA regular season 2018/2019, the ESPN television channel named the Slovenian basketball player the main aspirant for the prize to the best newcomer, and Doncic met these expectations.
Slovenian debut in the NBA took place on October 17, 2018 in a match in which the Dallas Mavericks played with the Phoenix Suns club. In this match, Luca earned 10 points and made 8 rebounds.
October 29, 2018, “Dallas Mavericks” fought with the club “San Antonio Spurs”. And in this meeting, Doncic was able to earn 31 points (thus, for the first time since his entry into the NBA, he overcame the thirty point mark).
On January 21, 2019, Doncic, in a meeting with the Milwaukee Bucks team, realized his first triple double in the NBA. Triple-double means a set by a basketball player during one match in three statistical indicators of at least 10 points. More specifically, Luke then scored 18 points, and also made 11 rebounds and 10 assists.
In total, in his first season in the NBA, Luca Doncic played 72 matches. And at the same time he was able to make a total of 8 triple doubles. In addition, on average, for one game he scored more than 20 points, made more than 5 assists and 5 rebounds. This is a truly impressive result. Only four players before Donchich achieved such indicators in the debut season (we are talking about Oscar Robertson, LeBron James, Tirek Evans and Michael Jordan).
In May, Doncic was honored with the inclusion of NBA rookies in the symbolic team, and in June he received the Rookie of the Year Award. Luca became the second basketball player from Europe (after the Spaniard Pau Gasol), who was awarded this award.
The game for the national team of Slovenia
In September 2016, Doncic announced that he plans to defend the colors of the Slovenian team until the end of his career. And in 2017, he went to Eurobasket as part of this team. The Slovenes eventually won a gold medal here without losing a single match for the entire tournament.
Slovenian rival in the quarterfinal was the national team of Latvia. The score of this match was as follows - 103: 97. And specifically Donchich earned 27 points for his team.
In the semifinals, Slovenia defeated Spain - 92:72. In this game Donchich recorded 11 points, 8 assists and 12 rebounds.
And in the final, in which Slovenia was stronger than Serbia, Doncic scored not too much - only 8 points. However, this can be explained by the fact that in the third quarter of the game Donchich was injured and did not go on the floor.
