🏀 Luka Dončić’s declining athleticism is already clear to the eye — and in the numbers
My Week in Sport(s) 🏀 ⚽️ 🏏 ⛳️ 🏒
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this edition: 🏀 Luka Dončić, ⚽️ Arsenal, 🏏 Yashasvi Jaiswal, ⛳️ Nelly Korda and 🏒 Gavin McKenna.
🏀 Luka Dončić’s declining athleticism is already clear to the eye — and in the numbers
“Who’s that? He doesn’t look very athletic.” My girlfriend had some questions during the first quarter of last Sunday’s game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of this year’s NBA playoffs.
You can probably guess who she was asking about. Is Luka Dončić — at 26 years old — already past his physical peak? After he was traded to the Lakers a couple of months ago, we looked at the amount of top-level basketball the Slovenian had played before he even reached the NBA in 2018 — and I wondered about the toll it would take on his body, if he didn’t improve his apparently inconsistent conditioning habits. Luka isn’t the only young NBA star who’s faced questions like these, either.
At the start of the 2023-24 season, Zion Williamson featured in an edition of this newsletter. I used the percentage of Zion’s shot attempts which were coming near the rim as a proxy for his physical capacity with the ball in his hands. Analyse Dončić’s career through a similar lens, and the results are stark. In his first two years with the Dallas Mavericks, more than 20% of his field-goal attempts were taken within three feet of the basket; in 2024-25, such shots accounted for just 10.3% of his attempts.
This is a lucrative spot on the court for Dončić; he averages 1.48 points per shot within three feet, before accounting for fouls drawn. And the absence of these attempts is really impacting his two-point efficiency: this year has been the worst season of his NBA career from inside the arc, according to Basketball Reference. He has had to buoy his overall efficiency by improving both the frequency of his three-point attempts — a career-high rate this year — and his accuracy from long distance.
But the threat that Luka poses driving to the basket also sets up his otherworldly passing game — and the percentage of his teammates’ made baskets while he was on the floor which he assisted plummeted in 2024-25. ‘Flipping the switch’ in the postseason is a common trope in NBA discussions; things likely need to change for Dončić much sooner than next year’s playoffs, though. These metrics and the evidence of the last couple of weeks make that clear — even to a casual observer.
⚽️ Arsenal won’t have any margin for error in this year’s Women’s Champions League final
Last Sunday, Arsenal overturned a first-leg deficit in the Women’s Champions League for a second consecutive knockout round. Their reward for winning 4-1 away from home against Lyon? The chance to face Barcelona in the final in three weeks’ time.
Against the dominant Spanish side, they won’t have any margin for error. Only six clubs have made the semi-finals of the UWCL since the competition was reformatted before the 2021-22 season. In head-to-head match-ups between those teams in Europe over that period, Arsenal have recorded the weakest underlying numbers: they’ve conceded shots worth 2.0 expected goals per game on average, and created chances worth only 1.2 expected goals per game themselves.
To their credit, Arsenal created more than Lyon did over two legs in the semi-final; many of the French side’s shots on Sunday came when the ultimate outcome of the tie was no longer in question. But their own finishing did run hot: they converted shots worth 1.2 xG into three goals. (Lyon also scored an early own goal.) If the English side let Barça get ahead in Lisbon — as they allowed Real Madrid and Lyon to do — the two-time defending champions are unlikely to relinquish that advantage as easily.
What else I learned last week
🏏 Yashasvi Jaiswal’s effective T20 batting shouldn’t be underrated
Other left-handed hitters like Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Abhishek Sharma — and 14-year-old sensation Vaibhav Suryavanshi — have attracted more attention than India’s current test opener Yashasvi Jaiswal during this year’s Indian Premier League.
But Jaiswal is very effective at the top of the order in T20 cricket, too. 14 opening batters have faced at least 600 balls in the IPL since it expanded in 2022. Among this cohort, Jaiswal has recorded the second-best effective boundary rate in absolute terms — behind only Abhishek — and the best in relative terms. At 28.0%, his eB% — which gives additional credit to batters who hit more boundary sixes than fours — is 7.5 points higher than the average recorded by other openers in his matches.
⛳️ After Nelly Korda, the top tier of women’s golf is distinctly international
Until last month, Americans had won seven of men’s golf’s major championships in a row. At last weekend’s Chevron Championship, however, a very different streak was extended in the women’s game.
No American woman has won a major since Nelly Korda took home last year’s Chevron title. That’s five wins in a row for international players, and 20 of the last 25 majors in all. The LPGA has collected Strokes Gained data since the 2021 season, and Korda — who has averaged +2.3 strokes per round — sits comfortably at the top of the tour’s leaderboard over that period. After her, though, you have to go a long way down to find another American; the next 18 spots are all filled by international players.
🏒 Gavin McKenna is already worth watching — NHL projections aside
From the perspective of professional scouts, Connor Bedard’s difficult start to NHL life — after tearing up at Canada’s major-junior level — will loom over 17-year-old Gavin McKenna’s record-breaking production in the Western Hockey League.
In the years prior to his draft-eligible season, Bedard averaged 1.7 points per game in the WHL; McKenna has averaged 1.8 over the equivalent stretch of his career. (He’s been a much better passer, averaging 1.3 goals assisted per game to Bedard’s 0.8.) The fact that we can’t automatically assume that NHL stardom will follow shouldn’t stop you from watching and marvelling at what McKenna can already do with the puck, though: some of his goals and assists this season have been breathtaking.
The next edition of My Week in Sport(s) will be published on Friday May 9th.
ICYMI
Re: Luka's shot selection, I'm curious if this best reflects his athleticism decline vs. a style change that the whole league is taking. Would the same chart for the Celtics chart look very different? Is this representative of their declining athleticism?