Luka Doncic had a very busy summer with the Slovenian national team, but he is at Mavericks training camp and is gearing up for the start of the new NBA season. Doncic played at the FIBA World Cup Qualifiers first and then headed over to EuroBasket where he shone, but couldn’t prevent Slovenia from bowing out at the quarterfinal stage.
The focus for Luka now shifts to helping the Mavericks go one step further this upcoming season after they made a surprising run to the Western Conference Finals this past postseason. The team suffered a blow to that quest when they lost Jalen Brunson in free agency, but they did address their issue of not having good bigs by acquiring JaVale McGee and Christian Wood.
Luka Doncic Hilariously Mispronounces JaVale McGee’s Name By Calling Him Joel
McGee and Wood present two very different kinds of options for the Mavericks, with the former surprisingly getting the starting role for this upcoming season. JaVale was somewhat of a laughingstock earlier in his career and while he has made a name for himself as a solid role player since then, it seems Luka wasn’t exactly sure about his new teammate’s name as he called him Joel during training camp.
Luka Doncic you’ve got to get to know your teammates better 😂pic.twitter.com/aPxjPWbd1p
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) September 30, 2022
It might just be a language thing and we are pretty sure there aren’t too many JaVale’s roaming around in Europe. It was still quite funny, but to Luka’s credit, he wanted to make sure he got it right by asking one of the staffers on the team. Doncic sure would love to have a certain big man named Joel from the 76ers on his team, but that isn’t going to happen.
Luka says he is happy with what he has though, as he stated that he doesn’t need more help around him to win a championship and added that the team has a lot of underrated players. He is most probably just standing by his teammates, which is good to see, but the Mavericks need to find a way to surround him with better players. Even someone as good as Luka needs another star, as there is a limit to how far one player, no matter how great, can take you in this league. We saw how the Warriors proved to be too much to handle for the Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals and we foresee a similar outcome should the two teams meet next year.
