Should players want to play with Luka Doncic? First Take debates

Should players want to play with Luca? No, I'm starting to think no, and there's no denying what the talent is. But the more you see Luca and what goes wrong here, the more you understand. He's never going to take responsibility for it. Yeah, he takes faux accountability. I almost chuckled the other night when he says, yeah, my defense could be a little bit better. I'm sorry. What your defense could be a little bit better. My diet could be a little bit better too, you know, let's be clear, you don't play defense, you don't play any defense, and then, and then you have Luca getting the question about Jalen Brunson, and I almost thought this the other day. I almost thought that, you know, maybe somebody around Luca put in a reporter's ear, and you should ask him about Jalen Brunson, see what that answer is. And instead of just denying the actual premise of the question, he says, oh God, yeah, yeah, we miss Jalen Brunson a lot, you know, his reputation around the league, you listen to Wendy talk about it last year, not great to begin with, exceptionally moody, and a guy that feels like a frontrunner in a lot of ways, when things are going great, he's all smiles, when things are not going well, like now, he's miserable. Last time I checked, Kyrie numbers since he got here versus before, exactly the same, maybe even a little bit more efficient than before, I'm starting to think that Luca is a guy that is never going to look in the mirror at what the problems could be, so now we're going to blame Mark Cuban, who by the way, deserves plenty of blame for screwing this up. You can't blame Kyrie Irving for this. He hasn't done anything wrong in all of it. Listen, are there some maturity issues with Luca? Sure, but if you show me a good loser, I'll show you a loser. I can understand why a 24-year-old player would be upset when his team comes up short. I can also understand why he would be frustrated that the franchise let Jalen Brunson walk out of the door and get absolutely nothing for him, didn't re-sign him, even though Jalen and Rick Brunson both said that he would have been open to it. They didn't do a sign-and-trade to bring back assets that could actually help Luca Dodges, and then when you got to the trade deadline, you mortgage the entire team, Morris, Dorian, Phinney Smith, and Spencer Dinwiddie, in order to bring over the Mercurial Kyrie Irving, who's a great individual talent, but since he's been apart from LeBron James, hasn't been able to equate to team success. So I understand that Luca, as the best player, has to accept some blame in all of this situation, but let's be clear about one thing. There's plenty of blame to go around, and as far as wanting to sign up to play with Luca, he's 24 years old. He's averaging 32-8-8, and he's already got three all-NBA teams under his belt. This guy is going to win an MVP at some point in this league. Now, your point about him not playing defense is well-taken, but we've seen Nikola Jokic win back-to-back MVPs, and he don't play a lick of defense either. Luca Dodges makes the game easier for other people, and he's not unique from other stars, in terms of having to surround him with the right complimentary pieces, in order to bring out the best version of him, and get him to realize his full potential, when it comes to winning, when it matters most. Well, there's two things, okay? Two things that I want to talk about, okay? One, how can Luca hold himself accountable, when his owner don't even hold himself accountable? And I'm talking to Mark Cuban, because he's been going on this rant. He happens, he happens to mention my name. I didn't do nothing. I didn't make the calls in that front office. I didn't sign the players. What are you mad at me for? All I'm doing is calling in, like I said. See, if the owner don't take ownership, then how is your franchise guy, that's 24 years of age, is going to take accountability in his part of it? And so, when I look at Luca, and I look at other stars around the league, when I look at a guy like Giannis Antetokounmpo, who guys love to play with, who guys would actually go to Milwaukee because they want to play with Giannis, because of his spirit, his joy, his hard working, his passion, the way that he's all in, the way that he encouraged his teammates. Hell, we see guys right now. We see guys right now that are trying to run to play with Steph Curry, right? We saw Kevin Durant want to go over there to go to state. Why? Because it was eye candy, the way that they were playing basketball. It was joy watching the way that Steph played the game of basketball. We heard LeBron James even said, if it was one guy outside of my son that I would love to play with, it's Steph Curry. Those are the things that you want to hear about your franchise guy. Now, let's look at the Dallas Mavericks, okay? We heard the rumors about him and Prozingas not even speaking to one another. Now, although DC is struggling, Prozingas is having one of his best seasons right now. Okay, they dropped the ball on Jaylen Bronson. Jaylen Bronson is balling out with the Knicks and Julius Randle right now. Now, all of a sudden you get Kyrie Irving there and you're behind the eight ball, which you shouldn't be and it's not Kyrie Irving's fault. So when a person jump out on the ledge and we criticize Luka because of what we're seeing, you know, my good friend, my colleague, our colleague and Zach Lowe said this years ago that Luka needs to stop whining and complaining so much to the referee. He didn't tell no lies. He does. He need to learn just who. But at the end of the day, when I look at Luka, he's a spectacular player. He's generational. The things that he have done individually, he's going to accomplish more. But when it comes down to being that guy that's attractive to say, man, I want to go over here and hoop with Luka. Right now, Luka is not that guy and I don't think it's a lot of players around the league that are saying, I want to run to Dallas and go team up with Luka. He has to change some things about himself and the great thing about it is that he actually have time to do it. All right, a reminder that Dallas is currently 11th in the West and will be eliminated from the playoff picture with a loss to the Bulls tonight. They need both of their final two wins and a Thunder loss in order to make the play in tournament.