Last year, reports emerged that the Dallas Mavericks and general manager Nico Harrison decided to trade their franchise player, Luka Dončić, because he was out of shape and not at peak physical fitness. However, much to the delight of Los Angeles Lakers fans, it appears that the superstar has now lost some weight.
In a recent video that has been trending on social media, the superstar is seen making a half-court shot while looking noticeably slimmer than he was last season.
NBA Fans React to Luka Dončić’s Transformation
On Friday, Luka Updates, an account tracking the Slovenian superstar’s career, shared the video, which has now garnered over 213,000 views on X. NBA Central, the NBA tracker account, reshared the video and captioned it, “Skinny Luka 👀.” Fans quickly began responding to this video clip.
One Dončić fan said, “Luka Dončić is winning defensive player of the year. Bookmark this tweet.” While the small forward is generally regarded as a poor defensive player, Lakers fans will hope that this tweet will be prophetic since they will need Dončić to be a positive factor on defense if they are to win a championship.
Luka Dončić is winning defensive player of the year.
Bookmark this tweet
— 🪄🐴 (@Luka77_x) July 25, 2025
One hoops fan wrote, “Luka with mobility?? Yeah, league is cooked.” Another fan agreed with this sentiment and commented, “Yeah, it’s over for the league 😭.”
Some fans, however, believed that these videos and the work athletes showcase in such clips do not translate on court when the season starts. One fan wrote, “This [is] worse than Ben Simmons’s offseason videos at this point.” Ben Simmons, who is known to be a very poor 3-point shooter, has been seen working on his 3-point shot in many offseason videos, but this has rarely translated to better shooting during the season.
This worse than Ben Simmons offseason videos at this point
— 🌨️ (@NotLikeRuss) July 25, 2025
Another fan shared a meme in response to the video clip and suggested that the NBA superstar appeared thin because of the camera angle and the way the video was shot. The fan tweeted:
— billz_nl (@billz_nl) July 25, 2025
“We boutta have our [Larry] Bird MVP year,” one Los Angeles fan commented as expectations build for the Lakers’ upcoming season. As Los Angeles fans continue to hope for an MVP-level season from Dončić, their focus has been on his contract extension talks.
We boutta have our bird Mvp year pic.twitter.com/GGwgB3bfl9
— 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗙𝗨𝗟 𝗟𝗔 𝗙𝗔𝗡 🕷️ (@Larespectful_23) July 25, 2025
On Thursday, any fears that Doncic would not re-sign with the team were put to rest when reports emerged that “the 26-year-old Slovenian superstar is expected to finalize the extension around August 2, just before he joins the Slovenian national team for EuroBasket training camp.”
Dončić will lead Slovenia in the European championship, which is slated to begin on August 27. In the group phase, Slovenia is in Group D, which includes teams such as France, Iceland, Poland, Belgium, and Israel. The top four teams from the four groups will advance to the Round of 16.