SPLIT (Croatia) – Luka Doncic is one of the most talented and skilled players the sport of basketball has ever known, yet he has decided to go through a makeover as he entered this NBA offseason and getting ready for EuroBasket 2025 with Slovenia.
At 26, he has decided to shed pounds and to sharpen his focus in the weight room. He paid even more attention to his diet. The Slovenia national team star has, since the beginning of May, increased a lot of effort into getting in shape.
Now new-look Luka, as revealed in a feature in Men’s Health, does not look like the player that Dallas traded to the Los Angeles Lakers on February 2 with USA center Anthony Davis moving in the opposite direction.
If that Doncic was recovering from an injury and digesting the fact that Dallas had given up on him despite his amazing abilities, he is now ready to take on the world. When he runs onto the court in Katowice to play Poland at FIBA EuroBasket 2025, all eyes will be on Luka.
A svelte Doncic has worked himself into the best version of himself at his training base in Croatia.
The change is stunning.
He looks different. He’s fit, and in a very good place mentally.
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Just visually, I would say my whole body looks better
“Just visually, I would say my whole body looks better,” he said.
According to Men’s Health, Doncic has had an intermittent fasting plan since the start of June that was designed to limit inflammation and help his body recover better.
Six days a week, he devours two high-protein meals and a protein shake. He has the first meal following a 90-minute morning workout.
Doncic has been in good hands, that of Team Luka – trainer Anze Macek, physiotherapist Javier Barrio and nutritionist Lucia Almendros.
In his workouts, he’s zeroed in on footwork and deceleration.
“His eccentric force is very good,” Barrio said in the Men’s Health feature. “And his strength is off the charts, really; he has really incredibly strong legs. Also, his center of gravity is really very low. So when he’s in his position, when he gets low in his stance, it’s very difficult to move him, you know?”
Doncic has always been on highlight reels but not for sensational dunks, but rather because of his shotmaking, passing and his ability to drive at defenders and get them off balance.
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His strength is off the charts, really; he has really incredibly strong legs
“Not everything is jumping high,” Doncic said. “I think I’m very athletic in other stuff. Balancing, controlling my body, what I do when I stop, slowing down.”
Even if he is not a superstar because of his dunks, his vertical leap is probably better now.
“This year, we didn’t measure the jumping yet,” he said. “But I think it’s a little bit higher.”
Who knows? Maybe there will be some Luka dunks hitting the EuroBasket highlight reels.
According to the player, it was tough to focus on other aspects of training and not to play basketball for the first month, with Team Luka telling him he needed to “let his body recover completely from the constant pounding of basketball.”
Whether this summer will help Doncic be at this best on the court remains to be seen. What is known is that there has never been a player like him.
No player was better in 2021, when he spearheaded Slovenia’s run to victory at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Kaunas and then to the Semi-Finals of the Tokyo Games.
Turning the clock way back, when he graduated to Madrid’s first team, still as a teenager, he dominated.
Before his final season in Spain, in the summer of 2017, Doncic made his EuroBasket bow and helped Slovenia win the crown in Istanbul, where they beat defending champions Spain in the Semi-Finals and Serbia in the title game.
He was named to the All-Star five along with teammate, tournament MVP Goran Dragic.
Doncic made the EuroBasket 2017 All-Star Five
In 2018, after his final season at Madrid, the talent and the winning mentality took him to the Dallas Mavericks, where he was an instant success and became one of the world’s most famous sportsmen.
He has been an all-star several times, finished third in league MVP voting in the 2023-24 season and that same campaign reached the NBA Finals.
All of that did not prevent Dallas from giving him a wakeup call, which they did by trading him to LA.
After the Lakers’ 4-1 defeat to Minnesota in the first round of this year’s NBA playoffs, Doncic was ready to get to work. This time, however, it was different. There was a sense of urgency like never before.
“So every summer I try my best to work on different things,” he said. “Obviously, I’m very competitive. This summer was just a little bit different, you know. It kind of motivated me to be even better.”
He looks good and feels better.
“My sleeping, my body, my everything … I felt more rested,” he said.
Now the basketball world waits. Will Doncic light up the EuroBasket the way he has twice before, in 2017 and 2022? Remember the 47 points he scored against France in Cologne three summers ago?
One certainty is that basketball fans everywhere will be eager to see Doncic play again, and that will happen with Slovenia at FIBA EuroBasket 2025.
FIBA