Sam Mitchell: “Luka Dončić can’t play basketball without the ball. He doesn’t cut, he doesn’t move, he doesn’t set screens. He’s great with the ball, but he does nothing to make his teammates better when he doesn’t have it… Steph Curry does the hard things. He’s always cutting & moving off-ball”

21 comments

  1. Steph > Luka for eternity. I don’t care what about Luka’s rebounding or assist numbers. He puts dents into the hardwood because he pounds the rock so much, taps out when he doesn’t have the ball, and is only interested in passing when he thinks it’ll lead to an assist.

  2. Although I agree. Comparing almost any superstar to what Steph does is going to be unfair for them. That’s not anybody else’s game. 

    Steph is an anomaly with what he does. 

  4. I mean… yeah? This is the way he’s played his entire career? If he doesn’t have the ball, he really doesn’t care.

    But he’s getting more criticism now that his efficiency is garbage (even compared to previously)

  5. I was always curious if the players like to be on the same team as Luka. Klay wanted to be, maybe hoping to get assisted on open threes. Seems to build the team around Luka you need very specialized players – shooters, cutters and lobbers. But that being said, Kyrie loved playing with him and he likes to have the ball.

  6. The most important and goat trait that steph has is that he doesn’t complain and just lets his actions speak for themselves. End of story.

  7. Why it drives me crazy that people compare Jokic and Luka to Steph. “Stephs a better scorer but look at his assist numbers compared to them!” As if Steph doesn’t play in the opposite of a heliocentric offense that will juice up his counting stats. If Steph played in a heliocentric system he might have averaged 35 and 11 a game the last 5 years.

  9. This is why I never understood the “White LeBron James” comparisons early in Luka’s career. He’s more comparable to James Harden. Miami LeBron was one of the best offball players in the league.

    Steph is an offball menace. He’s just as scary without the ball as he is with the ball.

  10. Watching the game yesterday, LBJ is nothing like he was and is making 50+ million (looks like he is 40…maybe a 18 and 8 guy with frequent injures), Luka looked exactly like this just said, and no bench. Top heavy and if that wasn’t enough, they sign Jr. No way this team sniffs and finals.

  13. Luka’s a really good player so it’s a bit silly to shame him because he doesn’t have the same playstyle as Steph Curry. I mean he could potentially be better if he changed his style up a bit, but it’s a bit of a navel gaze-y comparison. That being said yeah, Steph’s one of the all time greats at elevating the people around him.

  17. The main sub is stupid as hell. “99% of the league doesn’t do what Steph does off ball”. I mean what Sam Mitchell is saying is not about all the running decoy stuff, he’s talking about the basic fundamentals… Quite literally 80% of the league does what Steph does in this sense because they are role players. Cuts, screens, and blocking out is what 4 offensive players do while a ball handler has the ball.

    What I’m saying is, Steph isn’t above doing the role player shit where as most of the leagues *super stars* act like they are above that shit. LeBron, Luka, SGA, Harden, Embiid, Trae, Ja, Zion to name a handful who are the types of players who bring nothing to the offense if they don’t have the ball.

    But then again, that’s just the modern play style now, it can be effective if you build properly for it, most teams aren’t built for it but do it anyways. Works out in regular season and is really flaky in the post season. Celtics mastered that shit before Tatum got injured. It’s basically drive and score/kick, rotate, rinse & repeat. Spam it over and over with little to no off ball movement other than an initial PnR if the main ball handler can’t shake their POA defender. Spam it all day.

  20. It might be because Luka is not a playmaking point guard. Never was and never will be. He is a pure scorer who you give the ball and get out of the way to get you buckets. Allen Iverson never facilitated the ball yet he’s hailed as one of the greatest PGs to play basketball. His teammates never asked him to playmake. his coaches stopped asking him to playmake because Iverson just never wanted to do it. Yet Iverson has over 5K assists all-time while Luka is just 1K behind him in assists. There is a reason why Kyrie was brought to Dallas. To help facilitate the rock while Luka slashed at the rim. Making Luka your primary slasher & playmaker is like asking Draymond Green to stop playing aggressive defense. They just won’t do it.

  21. And we are still not surrounding this unique guy with the talent needed to win the chip. This FO is committing treason.

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