06-20-2024, 04:53 PM
(06-20-2024, 04:43 PM)michaeltex Wrote: With apologies and respect to our Slovenian board members...
I don't think Luka will address the fitness/conditioning concerns until he takes an off season to focus on improving himself physically. I know playing for the Slovenian team is important to him and his fellow citizens, but going from NBA playoffs to national team practice to friendlies to qualifiers to elimination tournaments doesn't give him more than a few weeks to train. Then the offseason is over and it's time for NBA preseason. He's been doing this since before he was drafted back in 2019. I know he's only 25, but there are a lot of miles on his body. Makes me tired just writing about it.
Apart from the physical improvement, I think it would help mentally to just have some downtime to get some perspective on what he wants to achieve and how he wants to get there. In a few years, he will be making roughly ~$1M per game, but he's got to keep producing to get that reward. Maybe having a family now will help.
Two thoughts on this:
1) He actually neglected to answer questions about the Slovenian team activities this summer during his Game 5 postgame interview, saying some variations of "I've got some decisions to make." I think he's facing a potential minor surgery situation on that knee, and that there's an outside chance this will be the summer he doesn't participate, not by choice, but out of necessity. Just speculation on my part - it's early days on that stuff, obviously. I bet Omahen knows more about it.
2) I think that for every summer prior to this Finals run it's arguable that the Slovenian team activities were a positive for him. I mean, there's an argument that playing year round prevents some recovery and focus on specific types of preventative conditioning, etc, but then again, I'm not sure I buy that Luka would've been using the time off for those things, anyway, so the Slovenian team might be responsible for keeping him from even worse conditioning? Just a thought. But at this point, I'm inclined to agree with you, moving forward. Although I get it from Slovenian fans' perspectives, too, especially since Omahen has explained the situation so well plenty of times.