Luka Dončić has three dogs: Hugo, Gia, and Viki. The trio have their own Instagram account, on which they’re shown lounging on an Alpine meadow in the mountains above the cloud line, or wearing adorable little Dončić jerseys, or sitting aboard what looks like a private jet. They vary in size—Hugo is a petite tawny Pomeranian, Gia a shaggy white Swiss shepherd, and Viki a large silvery mixed breed—but, like their owner, they are uniformly fluffy and bright-eyed. Not long after the Jordan Brand, a Nike line, launched the Luka 1, Dončić’s first signature shoe, a “Dog Dad” colorway dropped: white with bulbous pale-pink accents and the pawprints of Hugo, Gia, and Viki inked on the insoles. It struck me as a kind of clapback to those who considered Dončić lazy and soft—the shoes of a man who enjoyed a nice snuggle with his Pomeranian before dropping a triple-double upon his critics’ heads.
I thought of the dogs last week, when I saw Dončić on the cover of Men’s Health, looking lean, buff, and bronze, holding a dumbbell at a jaunty angle. The pictures accompanying the article, which detailed Dončić’s fitness regimen, were a sharp break from the usual images of Dončić smirking, complaining to the refs, or cuddling a poofy animal. This was about a different Luka, a new Luka—one who eats a hideous amount of protein, who fasts before workouts, and who doesn’t rest between weight-lifting sets. There was not a single puppy in sight.
This sort of article, in which a beleaguered athlete reports that he’s been training constantly and shows off sinewy triceps and diamond-cut calves, has a long tradition in sports media. And perhaps no one has ever had the setup for it quite like he does. After Dončić’s shocking trade from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Mavericks’ general manager, Nico Harrison, suggested the move was necessary because Dončić was bad at defense. “Sources” alluded to the concerns about Dončić’s poor conditioning. There were rumors about his “taste for beer and hookah.” It turned out that Harrison was among those who considered Dončić to be lazy and soft. There was only one way this was ever going to end: with vengeance and an almond-milk protein shake.
What’s striking about this particular story is how it was executed. Its two writers are also fitness trainers. As many readers noticed, an earlier version of the article claimed that Dončić had a forty-two-inch vertical at the 2018 combine, which he did not attend—but which, as Nick Angstadt, the host of the podcast “Locked on Mavericks,” guessed, matches a hallucination in Google’s “AI Overview” search feature. (On its website, Men’s Health says its policy is to “never use AI to report or write or fact-check, although it may be used for research purposes.”) A forty-two-inch vertical would have made Dončić one of the best leapers in the league; the top vertical at this year’s combine was forty-three inches. Dončić has made only three dunks in the past two seasons, and none since being traded to the Lakers. But the error is telling. There’s something unsettling about the report, and about the pictures, which are in high contrast, no doubt to really show the definition of those new muscles. It’s a dispatch from the uncanny valley.
“Six days a week,” the story reads, “he chokes down two high-protein meals and one protein shake—and he doesn’t have that first meal until he’s crushed his 90-minute morning workout.” Chokes! Crushed! Never mind that all this is happening at some facility in the small, picturesque Croatian town where Dončić summers, which, apparently, had never seen a barbell until Dončić had weights “trucked in,” or that, given his resources, those high-protein dishes are probably pretty delicious. The point is the framing, the narrative control.
It makes sense that the story landed just as Dončić was launching an American tour for his sneaker, set to end in Los Angeles just as he became eligible to sign a giant contract extension with the Lakers. (He signed a three-year hundred-and-sixty-five-million-dollar extension on Saturday.) Becoming skinny—“lean as heck”—is only partly about basketball. It’s also an exercise in brand management. “Just visually, I would say my whole body looks better,” he told Men’s Health. He’s not wrong. His jaw is defined by more than a close-cropped beard now. On his trip to New York last week, as he promoted his shoe—posing for photos with kids, appearing on the “Today” show, trading gear with the Yankees’ star Aaron Judge—he looked svelte. He looked like a professional athlete.
And professional athletes are supposed to sacrifice and suffer. They are supposed to be machines. The article was plain about the motivations behind it—to convince the “haters” (the Mavericks) that they were wrong to doubt their star. In the article’s telling, though, this was not just a revenge body; Dončić was supposedly on this trajectory even before he was traded, and had “quietly constructed a fitness team several years ago to help enhance his (very dangerous) natural gifts.” The whole thing was also clearly meant to convince fans, as Dončić signed a big contract extension with Los Angeles, that he is worth boatloads of money, that the Lakers are buying the newest model.
The story was inevitable, from the moment he left Dallas, if not before that. There’s no question that Dončić needed to get in better shape in order to play his best deep into the playoffs, or simply to avoid injuries. That doesn’t make it less sad to me. Part of the pleasure of watching him dominate is the way it challenges the usual conception of what better looks like. Sometimes it looks slow. It can look a little messy. Sometimes it’s ridiculous. But there has always been a playfulness to Dončić, an awareness of pleasure, even in his most petulant moments. The descriptions of Luka 2.0 make him sound like the human equivalent of Soylent. I miss the pictures of his dogs. ♦
