For the uninitiated, Luka Doncic’s debut with the Los Angeles Lakers headlined national television last night as they welcomed the Utah Jazz to Southern California. A wise decision for LA to introduce their newly obtained franchise centerpiece under a minutes restriction against one of the most inept defensive units in professional basketball.
The Jazz have struggled to defend even the slowest and least efficient attackers in the NBA (currently tied for 28th in defensive rating), and that was on full display Monday night.
Truthfully, this passive level of resistance may be a common sentiment used to describe the league’s response to the Luka Doncic era of Laker basketball. Historically, dealing for one of basketball’s best young players would yield a hefty fee for the recipient, yet the Lakers escaped their negotiations with Dallas by only exchanging an injury-prone Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and an insignificant first-round pick.
Los Angeles only got 24 minutes of Luka Doncic in his debut appearance, and in that time, the Heliocentric Slovenian toyed with the ineffective Utah efforts to slow down a man already recovering from a calf injury. The Jazz’s 113-132 defeat was imminent from the first quarter, where the Lakers jumped out to a double-digit advantage that Utah would never whittle closer than 8.
