[Men’s Health] Luka Dončić 2.0 Has Entered the Chat. The NBA superstar has taken plenty of heat for his conditioning and physique over the years, but after a full summer of training and lots of protein, he’s poised to take his game—and the Lakers—to another level.

LUKA DONčIć KNOWS that you’re thinking he looks lean as heck now. That’s because he’s thinking the exact same thing.

It’s an early morning in July in a quiet town in Croatia, and the five-time NBA All-Star is alone on a private basketball court, working out with trainer Anže Maček, midway through a 90-minute session that blends weight training, agility work, and shooting drills. This is the first of the day’s two workouts for the Los Angeles Lakers star in what may be the most pivotal season of his career, and he’s doing it fasted, just as he’s done for much of the summer. At the moment, he’s driving to the basket, a thick resistance band strapped to his waist, pulling against him during every shot.

The workout consists of a series of circuits, each set up to include an on-court challenge (like those resistance band lay-ups) and an upper-body and lower-body exercise. The facility, which is located in the town where Dončić has vacationed every summer since he was a teen, didn’t have weights until earlier this month when he had dumbbells, barbells, weight plates, and med balls trucked in. Now, Dončić can do everything from trap-bar deadlifts to landmine overhead presses—and he works through sprints and jumps on an outdoor track too.

He moves swiftly from circuit to circuit, banging out hip stretches one moment, working through renegade rows the next. It’s a session with barely any breathers, which is fine. This version of Dončić doesn’t need them. This Luka is…different.

You see it in the way his Jordan Brand jersey hangs loose, and in the new hints of definition on his arms. You see it in the complete absence of fatigue he shows when going from heavy Romanian deadlifts to dumbbell bench presses to lateral bounds—one right after the other. And you see it in the way he smiles when he admits that he’s noticed his sleek silhouette in the mirror. He subtly nods to his reshaped delts during our Zoom interview. And as he splays out his long-limbed physique on the bleachers in the gym, he seems relaxed, calmly making eye contact. His arms look longer today than usual, perhaps because he’s just so downright skinny, a fact which now (finally!) he sheepishly acknowledges. “Just visually, I would say my whole body looks better,” he says.

And yes, somehow, in the world of sports, the way you look matters—even though it shouldn’t. From Nikola Jokić to Patrick Mahomes to Shaq, decades before all of them, we’ve seen loads of evidence that athletic dominance comes in all shapes and sizes. But ask anyone to pick out an athlete in a crowd, and they’ll almost always point to the dude with LeBron-size arms and Ronaldo-level abs.

Dončić, still just 26 years old, is unquestionably a topflight athlete (more on that soon). But he’s never quite looked the Greek god part. And somehow, that shortcoming too often has undercut his five All-NBA first team nods and his 82 career triple-doubles (already seventh all-time). Last August, critics blasted him for looking “fat” and “out of shape” during a charity game. The moment the Mavs traded him to the Lakers in February, rumors leaked that Dallas didn’t want to deal with his love of beer and hookah. Even this summer, the NBA web has chattered that Dončić is on Ozempic.

What the Luka haters have never seen is this: Dončić slogging through two-a-days in Croatia while sticking to a gluten-free, low-sugar diet that includes at least 250 grams of protein and one almond milk–fueled shake a day. They never knew that Dončić had quietly constructed a fitness team several years ago to help enhance his (very dangerous) natural gifts. And they never realized how much he committed to training and diet this summer.

Here’s the thing too: Even if you thought Luka Dončić had a dadbod, he was already a top-five NBA player. And after pushing hard this offseason, he can’t help but wonder how high he’ll level up. “If I stop now,” Dončić says of his effort to rebuild his body, “it was all for nothing.”

Source: https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a65488151/luka-doncic-body-transformation/