The Slovenian is one of the best players on the planet. But factors largely beyond his control have started to turn his career into a slog<\/p>\n
Luka Don\u010di\u0107 must feel as though, these past few months, he\u2019s been twirling in a washing machine. He announced a separation from his fiancee in March; reports followed of a prolonged custody battle over their two daughters. As Don\u010di\u0107 plays in the NBA and his children live in Slovenia, he doesn\u2019t see them much as is. But after the reports of the rift with his ex emerged, he started playing some of the best basketball of his life: he led the Los Angeles Lakers to a 15-2 record in March, a stretch that included a torrential 60-point display against the Miami Heat. Behind Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s brightening star, the Lakers seemed to be sharpening into a real contender. Then Don\u010di\u0107 tweaked his hamstring<\/a> in April and the illusion shattered. He watched from the sidelines as the Lakers limped out of the playoffs with an inevitable second-round defeat to the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n Actually, Don\u010di\u0107 must feel as if he\u2019s been in turmoil for the past few years<\/em>. He made his first \u2013 and so far only \u2013 NBA finals in 2024, leading the Dallas Mavericks there with a barrage of awesome shotmaking. As the best offensive player on the court while playing through multiple injuries, Don\u010di\u0107 and his Mavs lost to the far deeper Boston Celtics in five games. As thanks, the Mavericks traded Don\u010di\u0107 to the Lakers, citing defensive concerns, when what had really doomed them against the Celtics was that no one aside <\/em>from Luka \u2013 who led his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals in that series \u2013 could play at the requisite level to win.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Slovenian is one of the best players on the planet. But factors largely beyond his control have started to turn his career into a slog Luka Don\u010di\u0107 must feel as though, these past few months, he\u2019s been twirling in a washing machine. He announced a separation from his fiancee in March; reports followed of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}