DALLAS — Luka Doncic wore an outlandish pair of Mavericks shorts, a rainbow-lined hat and a pair of sunglasses hooked to his T-Shirt as he spent part of Friday at the team practice facility, wrapping up his fourth NBA season.
Doncic’s apparel signaled a superstar ready for vacation and fun.
But his next few months won’t be so relaxing.
During the Mavericks’ final interviews of the season, Doncic detailed his summer schedule and how he plans to balance recovery from Dallas’ upset run to the Western Conference finals with his commitments to play with the Slovenian national team — all while being a key voice in the franchise’s personnel and roster-building decisions this offseason.
Little downtime to follow the Mavericks’ 100-game 2021-22 season.
“I’m not thinking about basketball right now,” Doncic said with a smile. “At least three, two days off until basketball. Mental rest.”
Doncic’s initial offseason schedule will look something like this:
Travel home to Slovenia soon.
Take about a week off from basketball to rest the nagging ailments and mental grind he played through this postseason.
Start national team practices June 15 ahead of World Cup qualifying matches against Croatia (June 30) and Sweden (July 3).
He’ll reconvene with the team in August to prepare for a 2022 EuroBasket, an 18-day European championship that for Slovenia’s group starts Sept. 1 in Cologne, Germany.
Several Mavericks on Friday talked about their mix of pride and disappointment to come three wins short of reaching the NBA Finals this season. Doncic is eager to lead Slovenia’s historic EuroBasket title defense and finish the offseason hoisting another trophy.
“I always say if I’m not injured or anything, I’m going to play for the national team,” he said.
Minutes after the Mavericks’ season-ending Game 5 loss Thursday night to the Golden State Warriors, Doncic gathered in the bowels of Chase Center with some of his closest crew.
His dad Sasa. Girlfriend Anamaria Goltes. Agent Bill Duffy. Dirk Nowitzki. Mark Cuban. Close friend and mentor Goran Dragic. Even upcoming draft lottery pick Chet Holmgren.
That’s when he first saw his offseason schedule and realized “it’s not going to be a lot of off time.”
Doncic expects July to include more rest than he took last summer when Slovenia’s run through the Olympic qualifier and Tokyo Games started about a week after the Mavericks’ first-round exit, spanned nearly two months and ended about a month before NBA training camps opened.
Coach Jason Kidd said a respite — more so than conditioning up-keep — is his biggest priority for Dallas’ 23-year-old All-Star this summer.
“We sometimes take for granted 23 means they can play every day, all day,” Kidd said. “But he needs a break. He deserves a break. The load that he carries for this organization is big.”
July, however, is also when Doncic will have the most Mavericks business to discuss.
He wants to stay abreast in decisions about roster moves — a “two-way conversation,” he said, with Kidd, Cuban general manager Nico Harrison and assistant general manager Michael Finley.
That’s what they want, too.
Doncic hasn’t dictated decisions or made specific asks so much as he’s aimed to stay connected and give feedback through regular texts, calls and Zoom sessions while abroad — even though a game-day nap caused him to miss an update about the Kristaps Porzingis trade-deadline news last February.
“We’re going to have a million things up on the board, and we’re going to throw ideas back and forth,” Harrison said. “You look at Luka, as great as he is, he has a different point of view than maybe I would and maybe Fin would and maybe even J-Kidd would, so we want to embrace that. And then we might have a different point of view than he does, and we want him to understand that, as well.
“It’s a two-way street. I think you’re crazy to try to build a roster and not include your best player. That doesn’t make any sense.”
He made clear re-signing Jalen Brunson in free agency and then making a move to improve center production and rebounding — in whatever ways they can work around the salary cap and luxury tax restrictions — will be the Mavericks’ biggest priorities this offseason.
Harrison sees less need for a major All-Star addition than he does in fortifying the roster with established players who can accentuate the otherworldly skills he witnessed in his first year working up-close with Doncic. “I knew he was amazing, but he’s next level,” Harrison said. “Like, he’s special. Like, he’s really, really special, and I could see that the first thing in training camp. The way he can manipulate the game, the way he sees the game, the way he sees things three and four steps ahead of other people, there’s only a few people in the league that actually see that.
“I knew he was amazing, but I didn’t realize he was, like, really, really amazing.”
Forgive Doncic if he’s not ready to think that far ahead yet.
Uber-competitive, Doncic still hurt from the Game 5 loss and thoughts about what might’ve been if Dallas had held onto their 14-point halftime lead over the Warriors in Game 2 to change the tenor of the series.
But the parting message Kidd gave before they reunite later this summer in Europe should start Doncic’s not-so-offseason on a hopeful note. “We’re going to get better from this, and we’re going to learn,” Kidd told him. “It’s all right to fail. Don’t feel like you came up short. The great ones have always failed and found a way to improve going forward to win a championship.”
