Luka Donic heard the story and could barely believe it.
Tim Marovt was also a prodigy, identified early as one of the best athletes in Slovenia. Marovt aimed at becoming a world class skier as well as skills and passion to become one of the best to get out of his country. Doncic had also lived this life, going from the basketball prodigy to the European sensation of adolescents to the NBA Megastar.
Advertisement
It was not so simple for Marovt. Doncic had locked himself while the lean kid shared what he had experienced.
Marovt went to Hawaii for family holidays in 2014, the 12 -year -old already en route to realize his sports dreams. But only one day of surfing in the Pacific Ocean changed all these plans, a bizarre injury called myelopathy to surf these dreams and putting obstacles apparently impossible in its own way.
“After 30 minutes of surfing, I felt a little tired and I went to the hotel room. Everything was fine, but I felt something unusual behind my back. It was not painful but like a strange feeling,” recalls Marovt. “So I went back to the hotel room. I took a shower and went down for a few minutes in my bed. And after 15 minutes, I went to use the toilet but I came across the bed
He was transported urgently to the hospital where the doctors told him that if his condition did not improve in the next 72 hours, he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
“I was very young but I did not doubt myself for a moment,” he said. “Since this young age, I was so focused. When I see something, I will do everything to get there.”
Advertisement
Dononic heard the story for the first time in the 2A sports laboratory in Ljubljana, in Slovenia, the gymnasium where they both trained with Anze Macek.
Doncic was there to prepare for a season with the Dallas Mavericks. Marovt, who had crossed hell trying to do a single stride, was a training for a marathon.
“It was so inspiring,” said Times so. “… It was a bit incredible just to hear. I mean, what happened to him was horrible. So just to make his mind do everything he does now, it’s incredible. ”
That day in Hawaii, Marovt accepted the challenge and not his fate, soon taking the first step towards the conquest of adversity. And if Marovt could work to do his next steps, the least Doncic could face his biggest NBA challenge would be to do the same.
Advertisement
Wednesday, Doncic takes another step in his new life as a member of Lakers When his team plays Dallas for the first time since the Mavericks exchanged him – a decision that led to demonstrations and injuries open in a fans who did not recover.
Doncic behaved better, the Lakers star resuming his form while her new team pushes the playoffs in the best position in which she won a title in 2020 as the head of the west.
However, the process aimed at bringing back to be the maestro of reflection on the step in the lead, has been incremental.
A mixture of shock, sadness and anger lived on the whole face of Doncic, he sank on each word and highlighted each expression of his first day as a laker. The Mavericks had just bet very publicly against him, prevented him the way where he thought he was staying forever and in the unknown.
Advertisement
The first days in Los Angeles were more in the past than the future. But in chaos, there was a director that Donci and the people closest to him tried to strengthen. Things would be better, the news would become natural, discomfort would become easier.
They knew he was making his way through the challenge.
Dononic and its support staff were amazed by trade and especially stung by the justification of Dallas, the reasons why he thought he was personal and questioned his character and his work ethics. The idea that he does not work hard, in particular, upsets him.
“They have no idea,” said the time of these skeptics. “… I did not find myself here by mistake. You know? I worked my ass to be here. So it’s a bit, I would say disrespectful, just sad that people say that.
Advertisement
Find out more: Luka Doncic and the Lakers make a statement in Blowout’s victory against the NBA Thunder
Since he joined the Lakers, people close to the team have praised Doncic so that his work was healthy after missing 22 games due to veal tension. It was a constant presence during optional training sessions while continuing his work with Macek and Javier Barrio, his fitness and medicine coaches who are now in staff with the Lakers.
Dononic and the Lakers recognize that there are ways to get the most out of him, a player who has passed his adolescence as a young professional in Spain to cross a training that is very erected and based on drills with the Real Madrid football club. It is far from his favorite work process.
“I always say, you know, I always improved in the game when I played five against five, head-to-head, two and two in practice,” said Times. “This is what I always see that I am the most improved when I play this way in practice.”
Advertisement
This is why Doncic has found means to add competition to the non-competitive parts of its routine, its training in the pre-match field with a long menu of tip plans, including a half-terrain competition that ends with Doncic coaches or Greg St. Jean and Ty Abbott Lakers.
“When you do not dispute it in practice, it is really difficult to get the most out of it,” Macek told Times laughing.
Dononic recognized the same Sunday after the Lakers thunder At Oklahoma City, saying that the pressure of Lugentz Dort, one of the best defenders of the NBA perimeter, helped him push him to another level.
“It takes my competitive spirit,” he said. “It leads the best of me.”
Advertisement
Macek was in the gymnasium with Marovt and Dononic and saw the way in which their approaches are very different. And he saw the ways they are the same.
For Marovt, there was intense work with visualization and mental power. So is not the case.
“I would say that I am more reactionary,” said so.
But Macek saw the way the two responded to the doubt and used it as fuel.
“When he was 15, he barely walks,” recalls Macek de Marovt. “He came with crutches … Totally out of shape. He couldn’t lift his legs. He couldn’t move well. But what I saw in his eyes was this passion to improve … to do something big. He was so motivated. And I said:” Ok, I need to help this child. “”
Advertisement
Macek studied the damage caused to Marovt by vertebral and nervous wounds, waterproofing in his muscles, the lanes disconnected between his brain and the legs that made each stage a challenge.
But as Doncic, Marovt had to be challenged. He needed objectives to conquer.
“Certain challenges were not objectives if Big. We did not say at the beginning that he directed marathons,” said Macek. “But we said:” OK, you will walk without walking or without crutches a kilometer. “… When we reach this, we will go, we will set another goal like:” OK, now you have to fold your knee. And whenever we pass these objectives, we advance, move forward, move forward.
Laka goalkeeper Luka Donnteic works with a coach in heating up before Thea’s match against the Hornets on February 19 in Cryto.com Arena. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“When he achieved the objectives and we set other objectives, it motivated him. And with this kind of motivation, he was alive.”
Advertisement
Marovt sees the same thing in Doncic, the thrill of accomplishing something large accompanied by the precipitation of proving others.
“I like it when people say I’m not able to do that.” Now when I run marathons, everyone says: “Tim, but you will injure your hips. You damage your body. And I’m just, “Yes, continue. … And I think it’s also with Luka, he likes big challenges.
The biggest challenges for Lakers are still to come, the playoffs that should start at the end of next week with the goal of Donic, winning its first NBA championship focusing. On Wednesday in Dallas will be full of emotion, reminding Donon what he lost when the Mavericks exchanged him – a base of fans who adored him, a city he thought was at home all his career.
However, fortunately for the Lakers, it will remind us to Donic that the Mavericks did not ultimately believe in him for their future. And Marovt knows how people like him and Donteic manage things like that.
Advertisement
“We have the same habits here because we are more excited and more motivated when people think that it is not possible. And we just like to work hard and simply introduce us and show everyone that they were wrong,” said Marovt. “Don’t get me wrong, it is not personally to prove something to someone else. Of course, in the first step, everything we do is for ours (self). But yes, I think it’s just to be more motivated to continue and show the world that everything is possible if we really put our minds and work hard.
“And since Luka was exchanged, I know that in a few weeks it would be unstoppable.”
Register for our weekly newsletter on everything related to Lakers.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
