The people furious at Luka Dončić this week are pointing at the wrong man. He chirped at a rookie, pointed at him, and dropped a 48-foot heave over him. All of that is legal, most of it was the best thing that happened on opening night, and none of it is what anyone should actually be angry about.
Start with what happened. The Lakers beat the Warriors 127-105 on Wednesday, the first game of the season for both teams. Yaxel Lendeborg, Golden State's 11th overall pick, made his NBA debut and clearly decided he wasn't going to be anybody's welcome mat. In the second quarter Luka pump-faked him into a foul, Lendeborg called the move weak to his face, and Luka laughed and clapped. The rookie kept yelling as the Warriors pushed the ball up the floor, and official James Capers stopped play to hit him, and only him, with a technical.
From there it only escalated. The Warriors briefly pulled Lendeborg. Luka hit a jumper and pointed at him on the bench. Steve Kerr sent the kid right back in to guard him. Then Luka closed the half with that absurd bank shot from near midcourt and turned to point and laugh at the nearest defender, who happened to be the rookie. He finished with 28 points, 7-of-18 from the floor and a perfect 9-of-9 at the line, three of those trips courtesy of fouls Lendeborg committed.
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RatingAfterward neither man pretended it hadn't happened. Lendeborg didn't blink: "I had a lot of respect for him," he said, "but then being in there firsthand, just watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect for the man." He added, "I was telling him he sucks. He can't score on me. You talk but you can't score on me. I said it the whole game." Luka was calmer about it: "Everybody knows when somebody starts talking, you get a different me. So that was it."
A 24-year-old who'd had a strong Summer League, a strong preseason, and Draymond Green calling him a future face of the team walked into his first NBA game and started trading insults with a six-time All-Star who's built a career on feeding off exactly that noise. Lendeborg picked the fight, competed hard, and lost it on the scoreboard. A rookie learned the guy on the other side enjoys this more than he does.
RTGThe part worth real anger is the whistle. Kerr said it plainly: "I thought the single technical was ridiculous. They were jawing at each other. I think it was the words Yaxel used that got him the T. But then Luka makes the half-court shot and gets in his face. That should be a tech." Kerr went further, saying the three fouls called on his rookie wouldn't have been called in any other league. That's a head coach standing at a podium accusing the officials of grading a superstar and a first-year player on two different scales, in the same game, in front of him.
One detail makes it stick: Luka didn't get a technical. By his own account he spent the night trying not to earn one, since last season he racked up enough of them to draw an automatic one-game suspension in late March. So the most notorious whistle-magnet in the league managed to provoke a rookie for four quarters, get in his face after the buzzer-beater, and skate clean, while the kid paid for every syllable.
Lendeborg's critics in the Luka camp will tell you he's just a mouthy newcomer who got what he asked for. His defenders will tell you the man he called a whiner is a whiner. Both can be right at once. Lendeborg's complaint about the flopping and the foul-baiting is a fair read of how Luka plays, and the officiating Wednesday proved his point better than anything he said into a microphone.
Golden State gets another crack at this on October 30. If you want to be mad at something before then, don't aim it at Luka's mouth. Aim it at the crew that let a star provoke for free and billed the rookie for the whole exchange.
