Slovenians, understandably, are obsessed with Luka Dončić; the prodigious wunderkind breaking basketball records every turn of his career, the international ambassador of their unfamiliar country, the Ljubljana-born native who frequently showcases his national pride.
Lately, Slovenia’s Dončić mania has reached new heights. Luka Štucin, a broadcaster for one of the country’s prominent television stations, realized this when the emails started coming in. He could tell something about the people writing him from their names and how questions were asked — but also, amusingly, from the email domains.
“It was all Hotmail,” Štucin said. “It was old people writing to me.”
Slovenia is seven hours ahead of Dallas, which means scheduled evening games here begin in the middle of the night there. Still, Štucin said, these emails asked him questions about how to watch the NBA: How can I get your cable channel? What if I only have an antenna?
“We all know that grandmas fall asleep at six in the evening,” Štucin said. “That grandmas are staying up to watch Luka, that’s something special.”
Iztok Franko started writing Mavericks analysis for Dallas-based D Magazine this season. He resides in Ljubljana, the nation’s capital city, but visited Dallas for the first time earlier this year — and his group chats have swelled with talk about Dončić and the Mavericks’ playoff run. When Dallas lost its first two games against the Phoenix Suns last series, he became something of a therapist for worried fans, who asked him to explain why Dončić and his team were struggling.
“For some (during the season), there is so much Luka news, so many Luka highlights, they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s just one more thing,’” he said. “(But in the playoffs), they know the context, they know this is big.”
When the Mavericks play afternoon games, which start during the prime evening hours overseas, Štucin said the broadcast receives higher ratings than any other North American sport — and even European soccer leagues. Still, what’s happening right now has engaged this small country beyond anything he’s seen.
Štucin is asked about Dončić everywhere he goes, especially when people find out or recognize him as a sports broadcaster.
“You meet someone for the first time, and they ask you what you think about Luka,” he said. “You meet someone you haven’t seen in 10 years, and they ask you about Luka. Bartenders, they ask you about Luka. At the mall buying shoes, they ask you about Luka.”
When he started his basketball podcast, called “Dvokorak,” he and his cohosts Tilen Lamut and Matija Kosmač wanted to avoid talking exclusively about Dončić. Lately, even they can’t avoid it.
“With Luka, it’s the whole country talking about him for a very, very long period now,” said Damir Rađenović, the marketing director of the Basketball Federation of Slovenia. “It’s been going on for five, six, seven years. To be that talented, that good in basketball, and to be that kind of a person that the whole country talks about you constantly for so many years, I think that shows how special Luka is in every way.”
When he was younger, Franko would stay up for games in the early morning hours. These days, he prefers waking up at 7 a.m. to quietly rewatch them, several hours after they’ve finished.
“(It’s) a process on the NBA app,” he said, laughing. “You have to hide the scores, but you need to not look at the whole screen just in case.”
Franko’s basketball writing has made him less temperamental when watching sports, but even his routine was ineffective the morning after the Mavericks’ Game 7 against the Phoenix Suns. He found himself awake at 5:30 a.m. and, realizing he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, started watching the game then.
Yet for every Franko, and for every Slovenian who is content with only watching highlights in the morning, there are many more like Jure Drakslar, who couldn’t resist waking up in the middle of the night to witness Dončić attempt to make his first conference finals. Even though he’s currently hundreds of miles from his birth country, working as a strength and conditioning coach for the Russian club UNICS Kazan, Drakslar has become equally obsessed with Dončić’s postseason run.
For him, it’s even more personal than sharing nationality with Dončić. Two summers ago, before the NBA restarted in the Orlando bubble, Drakslar worked with Dončić while he waited for games to resume. What struck him then was Dončić’s ever-present joy, a persistent feeling that permeated throughout nearly every training session.
“He’s just in love with basketball,” Drakslar said. “Initially for me, it was a big surprise.”
When Dončić roared to his 27-point first half against the Suns, grinning after every shot, Drakslar couldn’t help but smile. “Especially when you know him a little bit,” he said, “you cannot do something different.” He texted with Luka Rupnik, a Slovenian national team player and close friend of Dončić’s, who at one point messaged him, “This is so funny.” It was a feeling that all of Slovenia had.
In previous postseasons, Slovenians have been captivated by Dončić’s carefree water-bottle flips. This past series, it’s how Dončić reacted to being provoked that they latched onto. “It seemed like they got him mad, and that’s what Luka thrives on,” Štucin said. “Once Devin Booker said, ‘The Luka special,’ it was over.”
Franko’s group chats echoed that same message. They pissed him off, the feeling has been — they asked for this. There’s such confidence in Dončić that Franko’s friends couldn’t be convinced Dončić wouldn’t drop 40.
“What impressed me was how effortless it was,” Štucin said. “He was shaking his head, like, ‘You can’t guard me, you can’t guard me.’ We were impressed, and it’s really hard for him to impress us.”
Dončić already might be this country’s greatest athlete, which isn’t something to take for granted. Slovenia’s athletic achievements far outperform its population of 2 million: Their athletes have won Tour de France races, Stanley Cups, Olympic gold medals, Serie A titles and more within just the past decade. It’s hard to understand how this country rallies around their success stories without visiting.
But Dončić’s trajectory is something different. None of their athletes have been so quickly this good, this talented, this beloved. Never before have even the grandmas woken up in the middle of the night to watch him. It was Štucin who told me, matter-of-factly, that Dončić was already the country’s best. “I think it’s not even close, man,” he said. It’s unquestioned Dončić is on pace to lapse everyone else.
Dončić and the Mavericks lost the first game of the conference finals, an uninspired 112-87 defeat to the Golden State Warriors, but there will still be Slovenians awake at 3 a.m. to watch Game 2. And those who followed him closest never doubted these moments would come.
“I don’t know what to tell you, except we warned you,” Rađenović said amusedly. “We told you what’s going to happen when Luka was drafted. And I guess only a small number of people believed us here in Europe. But we just had to wait.”
(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
