{"id":426904,"date":"2025-02-04T19:50:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T18:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=426904"},"modified":"2025-02-04T19:50:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T18:50:51","slug":"luka-luka-doncic-officially-introduced-as-laker-i-wish-kobe-and-gigi-were-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/luka-luka-doncic-officially-introduced-as-laker-i-wish-kobe-and-gigi-were-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Luka Luka Doncic officially introduced as Laker: \u201cI wish Kobe and Gigi were here.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cThe fact that Kobe knows my name was great for me,<strong> I just wish Kobe and Gigi were here to see<\/strong> this moment.\u201d<\/em> Asked his first question as a Lakers player, Luka Doncic embraced the franchise&#8217;s legacy, talking about his interaction with the great Kobe Bryant.<\/p>\n<p>Doncic is officially a Laker and will play with <strong>LeBron James<\/strong>, something that until four days ago was just fantasy basketball. The Slovenian phenom has always admired the Akron native: <em>\u201cLike a dream come true. I&#8217;ve always admired him. There are so many things I can learn from him. It&#8217;s an incredible feeling.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, Doncic admitted that leaving Dallas was a shock for him as well: <em>\u201cHonestly, it was hard. The first day was really hard. The last 48 hours felt like a month. But today was much better and I am very happy with this opportunity. These are the Lakers, one of the best clubs in history.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Lakers GM Rob Pelinka, introducing Doncic to the media, thanked Dallas GM Nico Harrison, among others, for making the trade, adding, <em>\u201cLuka Doncic joining the Los Angeles Lakers is a seismic event in NBA history.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Doncic said he gave no confirmation to the Mavs that he would not sign an extension-\u201c<em>absolutely not\u201d<\/em>-and added that he found out about the trade while he was already in bed: <em>\u201cEveryone was surprised, you can imagine how surprised I was. <\/em><em>I was almost asleep when they called me. I had to check that it was not an April Fool&#8217;s joke. <strong>It was very hard for me to believe it, I was in shock<\/strong>, it was my home.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Doncic also said he was stimulated by the fact that he would be traded because of his fitness.When asked if he has anything to prove, he smiled and said,<em> \u201c<strong>To win a title<\/strong>.You don&#8217;t come here for anything but titles, so I have everything to prove. The goal is to win.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Luka Doncic just spoke to the media for his first press conference as a new player for the Los Angeles Lakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":426902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[509,496],"rumors":[],"typology":[15727],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-426904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","typology-press-release-en"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/02\/luka-doncic.png","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426904"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=426904"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=426904"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=426904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}