Real Madrid made Nick Smith Jr. official on Wednesday, and the former Lakers guard used his first interview as a Madrid player to explain what Luka Doncic had been telling him about the place. The club announced an agreement that runs through the end of the 2026-27 season, then published Smith’s sit-down with Realmadrid TV in both Spanish and English. The quotes below are from the club’s English version.
Asked about Doncic, who spent his entire professional career in Europe with Real Madrid before the Lakers star was drafted in 2018, Smith said his former teammate did not sway the decision but had spent the past year talking up the league he left behind.
What Smith says Doncic told him
“It didn’t influence my decision, but he always talked about Real Madrid, the EuroLeague, and everything it represents,” Smith said. “He always said the NBA was much easier. He talked about it a lot, and I took it as a personal challenge.”
Smith then turned it into a plan.
“I’ll write to him soon to ask him many things about the city,” he said. “I’m sure he’s happy for me.”
The rest of the interview covered why Madrid and why now. Smith said the possibility only surfaced last month, that he had never been to the city and that the club’s history and coaching staff made the choice an easy one.
He described wanting to play in a different environment and style, said he had watched the EuroLeague for a long time and admitted he is still learning the difference between the Supercopa and the EuroLeague schedule he is about to enter.
It is worth being precise about what this is. Smith is recounting conversations from the Lakers locker room, not relaying a new statement from Doncic, and the “much easier” line is his summary of what he heard.
Doncic, though, has said something close to it in public more than once, and the record is more specific than Smith’s version.
What Doncic has actually said on the record
The most detailed version came in March 2022, when Doncic was a guest on JJ Redick’s podcast, “The Old Man and the Three,” and was asked to compare the two leagues. As BasketNews transcribed it, Doncic drew a distinction that Smith’s account does not.
“Basketball in EuroLeague it’s more team basketball, it’s more tactics, and you have less time. NBA is tougher to play because you have many players that are basically impossible to guard,” Doncic said. “But I would say that scoring is easier in the NBA just because of the different rules, the amount of space, the time, so that’s why I said it’s easier to score in the NBA.”
His explanation was the defensive three-second rule. In Europe, a rim protector can sit in the paint as long as he likes, and Doncic argued that the NBA’s requirement that a big man clear the lane is worth about 10 points a night to a scorer like him.
The host who asked the question is now Doncic’s head coach in Los Angeles, which makes the exchange a little more interesting than a four-year-old podcast clip usually is.
Doncic revisited the subject this June at a Jordan Brand event in Ljubljana, a few weeks after winning his second scoring title with 33.5 points per game.
Asked which league is harder to score in, he picked the EuroLeague and pointed again to the rules. He has been consistent about it for four years, and he has never softened it as his NBA numbers climbed.
The word Smith’s version leaves out
The gap between “the NBA is much easier” and what Doncic has said in public is the word scoring. Doncic’s position, stated on the record, is that the NBA is harder to play against because of the talent on the floor and easier to score in because of the rules.
Smith’s recollection compresses that into a general verdict on the league, which is the kind of thing that happens when a 22-year-old hears the best player on his team say it enough times.
That compression matters for how the story travels. Doncic is not on record calling the NBA a lesser league, and Smith did not claim he was.
What Smith described is a teammate who kept bringing up his old club and his old league, and a young guard who decided to find out for himself whether the rules really do make the difference Doncic says they do.
Doncic’s standing to have the opinion is not in question. He joined Real Madrid’s academy at 13, won the EuroLeague title with the club in 2018 as both EuroLeague MVP and Final Four MVP and added the Spanish league MVP the same season before the Mavericks drafted him third overall.
Smith is about to play in the building where all of that happened, on a one-season contract, with Doncic’s name attached to the decision whether he wanted it there or not.
Why it reads as a challenge from the Lakers side
The context that makes “personal challenge” more than a throwaway phrase is what Smith’s NBA career looked like.
The 27th pick in the 2023 draft spent three seasons as a bench guard in Charlotte and Los Angeles, appeared in 147 NBA games according to Real Madrid’s announcement and, in 30 games for the Lakers last season, averaged 6.2 points in 12.5 minutes per game while shooting 39.5 percent from 3-point range.
The Lakers declined his team option in late June and kept Bronny James instead, then added Collin Sexton and Quentin Grimes to a backcourt that Doncic and Austin Reaves already run. There was no path to real minutes in Los Angeles this season, and Madrid intends to use Smith as its lead guard.
Free agent guard Nick Smith Jr. has agreed to a one-year deal with Real Madrid, agents Lucas Newton and Calvin Andrews of Klutch Sports told @hoopshype. He averaged 7.6 points in 17.5 minutes during three NBA seasons with the Hornets and Lakers. He’ll be Real Madrid’s lead guard. pic.twitter.com/nDJo7H65hb
— Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) September 12, 2026
A player who got 12.5 minutes a night behind Doncic is about to run an offense in the league Doncic keeps saying is the harder one. That is the version of the challenge that actually holds up. Smith is not going to Madrid to prove Doncic wrong about the rules, since Doncic’s point about the three-second rule is a structural fact, not an opinion.
He is going to prove he can be a primary ballhandler somewhere, and he chose the place his former teammate spent a year describing as the more demanding option.
What comes next
Smith’s deal runs through the end of the 2026-27 season, which gives him one year to make the bet pay off in a league where the spacing is tighter and the officiating is looser than anything he saw in the NBA. Madrid’s calendar begins with the Supercopa and moves into the EuroLeague, and Smith said he is still getting his head around both.
He also said he would be texting Doncic soon with questions about the city. Given how much Doncic apparently had to say about Madrid before Smith ever considered going there, the answers will probably run long.
Whether the NBA turns out to be the easier league for Nick Smith Jr. is the part neither of them can answer until the games start.
