Ever since he set foot on an NBA hardwood, Luka Doncic has been drawing comparisons with current and former players. First, they said that his ceiling was Hedo Turkoglu and now, they compare him to Larry Bird.
Doncic clearly has some things from Bird’s game. They’re both big but can put the ball on the floor and be playmakers, they can score from all three levels, and they don’t exactly strike you as athletic or fast players.
However, Houston Rockets coach Stephen Silas sees him more like LeBron James or Stephen Curryand went on to explain his argument in a Zoom call before his team met the Dallas Mavericks last night.
Rockets’ Stephen SilasCompares Him To Stephen Curry And LeBron James
“There’s two things, the basketball intelligence, the overall intelligence, the ability to listen and learn quickly, and the ability to take teaching and use it right away. You just have to tell them once and they’ve got it. All three guys were very much the same in that. All three guys are like, when you’re watching film with them, they see it. They see it already. Like Luka, I’d be watching films with him and he’d be like ‘Oh I know what’s coming. Here it is. I know. I know,” Silas told the media.
“Steph would be the same way and LeBron would very much be the same way, like, they see it before it happens and if they made a mistake, they knew they made the mistake and all those things. It’s so much fun to coach guys like that who are just so smart,” Silas added.
Last but not least, Silas believes that Doncic’s work ethic is also one of the main reasons why he’s so special, once again comparing him to the younger versions of LeBron and Steph he got to coach as an assistant years ago:
“They all have gotten so much better from year to year and I was blessed to be with those guys at the beginning, so I could see the growth that each guy has had. You don’t get that much better by just kind of not working or just expecting to get better all of the sudden,” Silas concluded.
Time will tell, but for now, it seems like Doncic is poised to become the new face of the league and that he’s destined for greatness, just like the future Hall of Famers he just got compared with.