‘Imagine how I felt’: Luka Doncic surprised he was traded to Lakers

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Luka Doncic flashes a big grin as he address reporters during the Lakers’ introductory news conference on Tuesday in El Segundo. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Luka Doncic sat and mostly stared flatly, the room undoubtedly spinning as he spoke for the first time officially as a Los Angeles Laker.

Luka Doncic. In the building. As a Laker.

Crazy.

“Everybody was surprised,” he said with a pause, “so you can imagine how I felt.”

His introductory news conference wasn’t one so much of celebration as it was one of processing, the 25-year-old megastar inside a new building after he was shockingly traded from the only franchise he’d known in the NBA to the Los Angeles Lakers, a place where Kobe Bryant once trash-talked him in Slovenian as a spectator in 2019.

“I remember that exact moment that happened,” Doncic said Tuesday morning. “It always stayed in my mind. It was an amazing moment, just for Kobe to know my name was amazing for me.”

Read more: Here’s why the Lakers believe LeBron James will not ask to be traded

Doncic now will have his place at the foreground of the franchise, just like Bryant, like Magic Johnson and like LeBron James all did before. The means of getting him — a nearly month-long negotiation that began inside a Dallas coffee shop between Rob Pelinka and Dallas GM Nico Harrison — have stunned the NBA, both rival players and team executives.

None of it was that the Lakers didn’t send meaningful value — they traded Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick. It was that Doncic, a five-time first-team All-NBA player, was even available at all, especially when he never asked to be dealt.

Tuesday, Doncic gave a Dallas-based reporter a rye smile when he was asked if he had given the Mavericks reason to believe he wouldn’t have signed the supermax extension he’d earned with the team.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

The disbelief he was in Los Angeles cut both ways, excitement for the new opportunity and shock that a trade could even happen.

“Honestly, it was hard at first. That first day was really hard. I felt like this last 48 hours was one month, like two days…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/imagine-felt-luka-doncic-surprised-200056274.html

Author : LA Times

Publish date : 2025-02-04 20:00:00

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