Wednesday night’s contest between the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks was emotional for guard Luka Doncic in the sense that it marked his first game back at American Airlines Center since Dallas parted ways with him leading up to the trade deadline.
But the Lakers rallied around Doncic, who went off for 45 points, and the team managed to come out on top in the game. Lakers forward LeBron James chipped in 27 points, and fellow forward Rui Hachimura dropped 15 of his own.
According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, something changed for Doncic and the Lakers on Wednesday. Specifically, he thinks that the game “elevated their bond as a team.”
“It is counterintuitive, but this was the night when Doncic became a Laker,” Windhorst wrote. “His team totally was devoted to uplifting him and protecting him and rallying around him. It was not a hostile environment, obviously, and that made it feel different than other players in ‘return’ games. But that didn’t mean Doncic wasn’t vulnerable. It was the most vulnerable he has ever been in his basketball career, and he knew it. He knew it in the same way he knew to ask for a towel when the pre-tipoff video started playing because he knew how he would respond to it. And the Lakers collectively experienced a performance that absolutely elevated their bond as a team.
“Doncic is still going to have a temper; he’s still going to curse out referees and fans. But his connection with his team is what changed Wednesday night. He felt it, too, when he told ESPN’s Lisa Salters on the floor after the game, ‘It’s time to move on.’
“The Lakers still have roster challenges, though once again, J.J. Redick had a swarming game plan aimed at crowding Anthony Davis and ignoring less feared players on the perimeter that helped cover up L.A.’s size issues. And just because the Lakers had this memorable evening, doesn’t mean they’re headed for a storybook ending.
“But it was potentially a foundational moment to build from, one that could be remembered as a crucial building block to bigger moments in the Lakers’ future.”
Doncic is seemingly more acclimated to playing for the Lakers now that he’s multiple months removed from being dealt to one of the more iconic organizations in all of professional sports. He has played 27 games with Los Angeles this season and is averaging 27.8 points, 8.1 rebounds, 7.6 assists and 1.6 steals per contest since the trade.
It’s worth noting that the start of Doncic’s tenure in Los Angeles didn’t go all that swimmingly. It took some time for the Slovenian to get his feet wet with the Lakers, considering he didn’t score more than 16 points in any of his first three contests with the team. L.A. lost two of those three contests, too, with defeats coming at the hands of the lowly Utah Jazz and Charlotte Hornets squads.
Lakers fans will seemingly find out if Windhorst is indeed right about there being a tighter bond among the team when the 2025 NBA Playoffs start up. The playoffs will begin less than two weeks from now, and Los Angeles will try to come out of the Western Conference for the first time since 2020.
Securing home-court advantage in the opening round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs would ostensibly aid Doncic and the Lakers in their quest to make a deep run. Los Angeles is on track to do just that, as the team is currently the West’s No. 3 seed.
The Lakers can win their second game in a row when they do battle against the Houston Rockets on Friday.
