For the majority of the NBA community, including its most knowledgeable insiders, Luka Doncic\u2019s trade to the Los Angeles Lakers was shocking. For Doncic, it was heartbreaking. He was leaving a team he considered family and had to hear a general manager comment on his defensive liabilities. Did that deter him? Not according to the woman who manages him.<\/p>\n
Lara Beth Seager, Doncic\u2019s business manager, was not afraid of breaking the news of the trade to the Slovenian, who at that point of the season was still looking to carry the team into the play-offs. GM Nico Harrison, however, wanted a \u2018defender\u2019 in the side<\/a>, which is why he went for a straight Doncic-Anthony Davis swap.<\/p>\n Seager, however, revealed that it wasn\u2019t that tough for Doncic to accept that Los Angeles would be his new home. After all, America wasn\u2019t his home as a whole. He hailed from Slovenia, a country he left at a very, very young age in hopes of achieving stardom. That he did.<\/p>\n In an interview with Sports Business Journal, Seager was asked how she anticipated Doncic would react to Harrison\u2019s decision. \u201cLuka is super strong. Luka is resilient,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n \u201cHe left home at 13 years old and went to Spain to play basketball, and didn\u2019t speak a lick of Spanish. This kid is a survivor and a fighter, and I knew he was going to be OK,\u201d\u00a0Seager added<\/a>.<\/p>\n Doncic<\/a>, indeed, has been a superstar for as long as most basketball fans today can remember. He came to Spain, where he conquered the country and Europe with Real Madrid, becoming MVP in the EuroLeague and the Liga ACB at just 19 years old. He was destined for success in the NBA.<\/p>\n Right from the get-go, Doncic established himself as one of the best players in the league and became the face of the Dallas Mavericks<\/a> franchise, even carrying them to a Finals appearance in 2024. Between 2018 to 2025 (his entire career in Texas), he has averaged 28 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists per game.<\/p>\n Had Doncic stayed in Dallas longer \u2014 which he admittedly would have loved \u2014 he might even have surpassed the legacy of Dirk Nowitzki, widely regarded as the greatest Maverick of all time, who spent 21 years with the team.<\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s just a hypothetical today. He\u2019s now at the Lakers<\/a>, where the storied franchise has worked hard over the summer to present him as its new face<\/a>. He even signed a three-year $165 million contract with the Lakers, signaling that he\u2019s not looking to shift camps anywhere else in the medium run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the majority of the NBA community, including its most knowledgeable insiders, Luka Doncic\u2019s trade to the Los…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,149,4034,1698,300,4044,30722,251,150,4033,4043,368,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-283010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dallas-mavericks","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-lakers","12":"tag-lakers","13":"tag-lalakers","14":"tag-lara-beth-seager","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-losangeleslakers","19":"tag-luka-doncic","20":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115201156465352866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}