Can Doncic play small forward?

#1
I dont know much about Doncic but people seem to be really high on him. Would he be able to play small forward? Because we have Buddy and Bogdan already doing well at shooting guard.

If he's a third shooting guard I would rather fill a positional need and pick Ayton.
 
#2
I dont know much about Doncic but people seem to be really high on him. Would he be able to play small forward? Because we have Buddy and Bogdan already doing well at shooting guard.

If he's a third shooting guard I would rather fill a positional need and pick Ayton.
He's a small forward but he's most likely going to struggle to defend SG's and SF's. He has point guard type skills but he is definitely not a point guard. More like a point forward.

Ayton will either be taken first or second so it won't matter whether Doncic fits a positional need or not. The Kings will get to choose whoever is left over.
 
#4
In my opinion, he is strong and tall enough to defend other Small forwards.
In offense, he can play from 1 to 3.

So, at the end of the day, in my opinion, Luka is point forward. :D He is not pass first type of player, he is not score first type either... he is all arounder, and very flexible in rotations, so you can pair him with Buddy, Bogdan or Fox, or two of them (the most logical) - he will adapt.
 
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#6
I would say SF is his best position, especially if you base positions on who you can guard. He's got a thick frame and good strength already so I'd rather see him against SFs than trying to contain explosive guards where he struggles.

Doncic is a pretty good team/help defender and gives good effort, he just doesn't have the lateral quickness to be a good individual defender against athletic opponents.
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#7
In a vacuum, his position classification probably has more to do with defense than anything else. He can play the 1,2, or 3 positions offensively and he's going to be a primary ballhandler most of the time he's on the floor regardless. Body type wise I would expect him to settle in as a SF but then if you look at the talent distribution in the league right now, who are we really worried about guarding at the SG position? There were only 6 SGs who reached the 20ppg mark last season and 3 of them play in the Eastern Conference. Most of the tougher SFs to cover (Lebron, KD, Paul George) are spending a lot of time playing the PF position these days to stretch the floor and get an extra shooter on the floor. Nobody is playing man to man defense anymore anyway so his role in the defense is going to be largely the same whether we call him a SG or SF.

We also have to find minutes for Buddy Hield and Bogdan Bogdanovic and that's going to be the bigger factor for us. With Fox at PG, Buddy or Bogdan at SG (with the other coming in as a supersub) we'd be playing Doncic at SF but he'd be sharing PG duties with Fox while they're both on the floor. Assuming Fox can improve his three point jump shot to the point where defenses need to respect it, we're looking at elite shooting on the wing and a decent shooter at PG. To follow the trend we'd get 1 big guy who's limited to the midrange and in (Giles?) and the other needs to be a guy who can space the floor (Skal?) or potentially a defensive specialist who can guard the 3, 4, and 5 positions and hopefully knock down open shots.