The thing about Luka Doncic’s unguardable stepback shot is that it doesn’t look like it should be. You often see it coming: Doncic, dancing on the perimeter, emboldened by an overmatched defender switched onto him, with the clock often winding down to its very end. Only then does Doncic make his strategic retreat. It’s not lightning quick, not completely unpredictable, and that must infuriate opponents. Why can’t they step forward as quickly as Doncic steps back? They must wonder this as the shot sails over their head.
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Doncic’s stepback has already become his signature shot; it’s almost as famous as he is. The shot has humbled defenders, beaten buzzers, bewildered coaches and won games. Against the Houston Rockets last December, Doncic twice stepped back against Clint Capela in the closing minutes. Dallas was down by eight points when Doncic went on a personal 11-0 run that he capped with this shot, the eventual game-winner.
When Doncic played Houston again earlier this month, he lost, but James Harden dapped him up after the game. “Respect,” he tweeted after the game, along with a photo of their embrace. That’s earned respect from the only player whose stepback shot is more prolific. Let’s not mince words: Harden’s stepback is on another level from Doncic’s, and is the most dangerous single weapon in the league right now. But just as there’s a large gap between Harden’s shot and Doncic’s, there’s another gap between Doncic’s and everyone else. Harden has taken a staggering 384 stepback shots behind the 3-point line this season, according to data provided to The Athletic by the NBA. But Doncic has the second most, 119. That’s more than double the next player, Mike Conley, who has attempted just 45 stepback 3s.
Doncic has only hit 35.3 percent of those stepback 3s, or 42-of-119. (Harden converts more than 41 percent of his.) Early this season, the Mavericks coaching staff discouraged Doncic from relying on that shot too heavily. “He’s such a good penetrator, I feel it’s important he strikes a balance,” Rick Carlisle said in early December. But as the season has progressed, Doncic has earned Carlisle’s trust – and total control over the Dallas offense. Since Jan. 1, Doncic’s usage rating has skyrocketed to seventh in the entire league. That includes plenty of stepbacks.
“I’m pretty liberal about that shot as long as it’s aggressive, decisive, and on-balance. That’s the thing. But look, it’s a weapon, it’s a weapon for sure,” Carlisle said earlier this month. “The important thing is the timing and the situation, and Luka, he understands that.”
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While aggression and decisiveness are subjective measures, balance, thanks to increasingly detailed sports science, is not. “It shows the amount of thrust he creates and how quickly he can get his balance,” Carlisle said. He might not even know how right he is. Doncic’s stepback isn’t just an unstoppable weapon for the league’s most sensational rookie; it’s a fundamental measure of Doncic’s unique athleticism, which has paved the path towards his success.
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY SportsWhen Marcus Elliott first met Doncic three summers ago, he was struck by his demeanor. Elliott, a Harvard-trained physician, is the founder and director for P3 Applied Sports Science, a training institution headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, one that has partnered with the NBA and one that elite basketball athletes have sought out over the past decade. When Doncic flew across the world, he was a 16-year-old Slovenian already playing professionally for Real Madrid. But, Elliott thought, he could have arrived from down the street.
“He seemed like he was a Santa Barbara kid who probably played volleyball on the beach, maybe surfed,” Elliott said. “He was so at home here as a 16-year-old, wandering around with all the pro athletes, but acting like a Santa Barbara high school kid. He was adorable.”
Elliott also recognized Doncic’s potential. “He had really unusual focus for a 16-year-old kid,” he said. Doncic already had the underpinnings of an elite athlete: “An athlete who could be very good laterally, and could be (a) very good change-of-direction athlete, and could potentially be a very good braker,” Elliott said. The P3 staff worked with Doncic while he stayed with them, and then they sent him back to Real Madrid with a training program and an open invitation to return every summer.
Did you pause when reading “Doncic” and “elite athlete” in the same sentence? What does elite athleticism mean to you? Athleticism, or at least the American perception of it, involves running fast and jumping high. Our sports culture is obsessed with 40-yard dashes and maximum vertical leaps. Doncic’s measures in those two areas are subpar, and questions over his athleticism helped ensure two teams passed on him and another traded down in last year’s draft. But those physical traits – while impressive in an isolated setting, like a breakaway dunk – are less functional than we think.
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“Luka’s one of these guys that his most glaring performance advantages, his superpowers, are not the things that have traditionally defined athleticism in a basketball player,” Elliott said. “(That fact) makes him the perfect athlete for teams to get confused with (and) make bad decisions about his athleticism.”
Elliott promotes a more nuanced and complex perception of athleticism at P3. For example, rather than overemphasizing max vertical, Elliott’s team tests how quickly athletes can jump to 10 feet, six inches – the average height that rebounds are secured in the NBA. Elliott uses phrases like “jump vocabulary,” or the number of different ways that an athlete can jump. If an athlete jumps incredibly high but incredibly slow, then that athleticism isn’t as functional. “It looks great in a perfect setting, but you don’t get the perfect setting that often,” Elliott said.
How many different ways can you jump? That’s the question that Elliott asks, not how high. And when you ask questions in that manner, whether for vertical jump or other physical measures, Doncic’s athleticism looks entirely different.
“When all these teams were asking, ‘Is he athletic enough to play on the perimeter in the NBA?’” Elliot said. “We already knew the answer to that.”
James Harden is P3’s “icon athlete,” Elliott says, but Doncic might be next. Harden and Doncic comparisons existed before Doncic was even drafted, but they accelerated because of the similarities in their stepback jumpers. Ironically, it’s the deceleration that makes them so similar. Harden tests in the 99th percentile when he puts on the brakes, while Doncic ranks only slightly below him, in the low 90th percentile.
The two players’ similar athleticism permeates throughout their entire basketball game, but it’s particularly observable when shooting the stepback 3. Doncic’s eccentric forces are high and quick, which is a technical term for the amount of force that Doncic can generate when his muscles are being lengthened. Think about a bicep curl: you contract the muscle when you raise a dumbbell to your shoulder, and you lengthen it again when you let it back down to your hip.
When Doncic steps back, his stance often resembles the splits. Consider the moment when he plants his front leg in these images, like this:
And this:
And this:
Doncic’s athleticism allows him more power, and more force, when launching himself from what should be a position of weakness, where his muscles have already been engaged in forward momentum. The amount of physical stress your body puts on your joints is volitional, Elliott said; Doncic’s body knows it can handle more than an average athlete, and it shows. Sometimes, Doncic just hops backwards, but more frequently, he feints towards the rim before hurdling backward on his patented move. That combination of acceleration, then deceleration, and then force, and the speed at which he transitions between those phases, is rare.
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“He’s got a system that can stay in balance when he does that, when he’s accelerating really fast with big force. That means his trunk is stable enough, his hips are stable enough, his higher systems; it’s not enough (for) that to stop. You’ve got to be able to stop in control. He does have that,” Elliott said. “I don’t want to oversimplify it, but those are the biggest components.”
Watch it once more, and tell me Doncic wasn’t built to make these shots.
Doncic says he doesn’t remember when he started shooting the stepback; he was in his early teens, or maybe even younger. Phoenix Suns head coach Igor Kokoškov told me Doncic couldn’t always step back in both directions, and remembers him developing the shot over the years he knew him. On the practice floor, Mavericks assistants also tease Doncic about the shot, guarding him one-on-one and baiting him into it. They might tell him they know it’s coming, or that he’s going to miss. No one can guard it, though.
Doncic’s stepback might be his signature shot, but it’s merely a function of his athleticism and a component of his incredible success through this rookie season. It works in conjunction with his drives to the rim, which he did more in February’s six games than any other player in the league. The 19-year-old has seen his shooting percentages dip even as his scoring peaks since 2019 began; coaches attribute that to tired legs and the NBA schedule’s grind.
Still, it’s the stepback that most successfully demonstrates Doncic’s uniqueness. He’s 6’8 and weighed nearly 220 pounds before the season, but his body generates forces in ways and quantities that most other athletes simply can’t handle; and then has the experience and skillset to apply those advantages onto the basketball court itself. Doncic isn’t athletic? Sure, keep telling yourself that.
As Elliott said: “(Drafting Doncic) may end up being the smartest thing Mark Cuban ever did.”
(Lead photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)
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