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There’s a common idiom that most NBA players follow when it comes to the league’s best players: Don’t poke the bear.
But when it came to Luka Doncic on Wednesday night during the Lakers’ season-opening blowout win over the Warriors at Crypto.com Arena, Yaxel Lendeborg not only poked the bear, but ignited a barrage of chirping late in the second quarter.
And the Slovenian superstar made it clear that whatever the Warriors rookie said was out of bounds.
“He was talking crazy,” Doncic said.
The trash talk started when the Lakers 6-foot-8 guard picked up a shooting foul against Lendeborg late in the second, with Doncic laughing as the No. 11 pick in June’s NBA draft became frustrated with the call.
over the Warriors. Getty Images
Even after Lendeborg subbed out, Doncic kept talking to the 6-foot-9 forward out of Michigan while he was on the bench after knocking down a fadeaway against Will Richard, and once again while Sandro Mamukelashvili was shooting free throws.
Lendeborg picked up a technical foul with 22 seconds left in the first half after he and Doncic, presumably, kept chirping at each other.
The punctuation mark to the jawing came right before halftime, when Doncic nailed a buzzer-beating halfcourt shot to give the Lakers a 66-52 lead going into the game’s break.
“Nobody understands what he says,” Austin Reaves quipped of Doncic. “He’s not speaking English. I didn’t understand anything and barely knew anything was going on. So, I know we need an article to come out and I’m going to start paying people to talk s— to him so gets [into] another gear when people start trying to talk to him.”
The most impressive part of the back-and-forth was Doncic not picking up a technical foul during the whole ordeal after being assessed 16 technical fouls last season.
“I wasn’t trying to talk back this season,” Doncic said. “I’m trying to not get techs. So it was the first time that [it] was not a double tech, because I didn’t say nothing. So I’m working on it. But as you see, it worked great.”