This week, Luka Doncic took part in a time-honored tradition employed by many athletes before him: a news cycle about how he’s in the best shape of his life. As the Lakers star made a trip to New York, showing up at Yankee Stadium and Dyckman Park to promote a shoe or whatever, Men’s Health published a feature on his summer training regimen. One specific detail about his physique sounded incredible, in the literal sense of the word.
The feature, co-written by Andrew Heffernan and Ebenezer Samuel, presents an inside look at how Doncic is getting lean and strong with his trainer in Croatia. You can probably guess where this is going. He’s not just getting up shots—he’s lifting weights. He’s working on his conditioning. He’s doing something with a resistance band. He’s eating better:
What the Luka haters have never seen is this: Dončić slogging through two-a-days in Croatia while sticking to a gluten-free, low-sugar diet that includes at least 250 grams of protein and one almond milk–fueled shake a day. They never knew that Dončić had quietly constructed a fitness team several years ago to help enhance his (very dangerous) natural gifts. And they never realized how much he committed to training and diet this summer.
This is a common angle for an athlete coming off a disappointing season or major injury. It’s a way to ease concerns and raise expectations. This particular instance with Doncic is more pointed because of the backstory: how the article’s subject was unexpectedly traded away by the only NBA team he ever played for, and how that team’s general manager insinuated that the aforementioned subject was a lazy piece of shit who couldn’t play defense, as if that completely nullified the advantage of reliably getting something in the range of 28-8-8 per game. The Men’s Health feature and its accompanying photos are not just for the “haters,” but a message to the Dallas Mavericks and Nico Harrison for their decision. It also functions as digestible propaganda for Lakers fans, easily the most credulous community in the entire league. Before they were occupied with this news, they were gassing up the team’s acquisitions of Marcus Smart and Deandre Ayton. These dopes are ready to make NBA Finals plans because someone introduced Doncic to almond milk.
Anyway, the one detail of the Men’s Health feature that stuck out to many readers was this paragraph (from the original version):
Oh, and he can jump. Lost in the narratives about his weight and conditioning is the fact that, as a 19-year-old at the 2018 NBA Scouting Combine, Luka delivered a 42-inch vertical leap. After a full offseason with Team Luka, he’s not sure that number is still the same. “This year, we didn’t measure the jumping yet,” he says. “But I think it’s a little bit higher.”
Just imagine an astonishingly crimson Luka Doncic with a 42-inch vertical, resembling the early stages of one of those JD Vance memes, as he throws down unprecedented dunks like some NBA Jam demigod. As funny as that would be, there’s no way it’s true. Doncic didn’t even attend that year’s combine; he was still playing for Real Madrid at the time. So where did that number come from? As Nick Angstadt of Locked On Mavs theorized, Google’s AI summary for the search “luka doncic vertical” may have grabbed that figure from Donte DiVincenzo’s measurements at the combine and attributed it to Doncic instead. If you conduct the same search now, Google’s “AI Overview” essentially betrays itself and makes no sense:
I emailed Men’s Health executive editor Ben Court to see if this was how the 42-inch vertical got in there, but haven’t heard back as of publication. In any case, that section was eventually edited, and a correction was added to the bottom of the article. The broader lesson here is that Google’s “AI Overview” is totally unreliable and should not be used as a source for anything. That said, there’s another less grievous issue with the Doncic piece. See if you can spot it:
Such athletic gifts aren’t as immediately evident as a highlight-reel dunk from Shai-Gilgeous Alexander, or a god-level chasedown block from LeBron. Eccentric force doesn’t fill out a tank top or show up on a vertical-jump test. But it’s an unheralded key to the game. Dončić has always valued such stealthy abilities. “Not everything is jumping high,” he says. “I think I’m very athletic in other stuff. Balancing, controlling my body, what I do when I stop, slowing down.”
Focus on that first sentence. The hyphen in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s name has been misplaced, but also he’s not really known for his dunks. According to Basketball Reference, the Thunder guard has 204 dunks across seven seasons in the NBA. For comparison, Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves has 307 across five. SGA clearly can throw it down, but it’s not an integral part of his game. There’s no correction to be made here—aside from fixing the hyphen—but that sentence, combined with the mistake about Doncic’s vertical, suggests that it would have been prudent to get an edit on this by someone who knows more about the league. As for whether the article’s assertions about Doncic’s shredded new body can be believed, that depends on how much trust you want to place in an editorial team that knew this little about the subject.
