By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Luka Doncic made headlines two years ago when he said that it’s easier to score in the NBA than in Europe due to aspects like the bigger court size and the three-second rule on defense.= Draymond Green, a former DPOY and overall defensive specialist, believes that Doncic has proven his point, at least when it comes to himself.
Here’s what Green said on Doncic and the challenge of defending him to Rachel Nichols and ESPN’s The Jump:
“As a defender your only goal is to make a guy do what he doesn’t want to do. And if you can’t do that on the defensive end more often than not, you’re going to be successful. With Luka, you can’t make him do what you want him do. You can’t speed him up, he goes at his own pace. If he wants to drive to the hole… if you aren’t going to force him to drive to the hole, he’s still going to get the step back. If he doesn’t want to get to the step back and he wants to drive to the hole, he u he usually gets there. So I think that the challenge with Luka is that you can’t speed him up, you can’t get him to do what you want him to do.
“I think he made a statement where he said ‘It’s easier for me to score in the NBA than it was for me to score in Europe’ and everybody went crazy, like ‘how disrespectful is he’. He’s shown that it’s true.”
Doncic faced Green and the Warriors twice in the previous week. In the first game he had 27 points, six rebounds and six assists in a 147 – 116 blowout loss and two days later, he led the Mavs to a 134 – 132 win by posting career-high-tying 42 points plus 11 assists and seven rebounds.
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