In a video released by Overtime, Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic was asked an interesting question.
If Doncic had played college basketball, what school would he have wanted to play for?
“Arizona,” he said. “They say it’s good there.”
While Doncic didn’t provide any other reasoning why, it’s easy to understand why he’d want to play for the Wildcats. It’s a large state school with a ravenous fan base and strong basketball tradition.
Given Doncic’s immediate brilliance as a rookie in the NBA, it’s interesting to imagine what he would have accomplished as a college basketball player.
Doncic would have joined former Maverick Jason Terry as one of the franchise’s great players from Arizona. Terry was a part of Arizona’s 1997 national championship team, was named Pac-10 Player of the Year as a senior and his number 31 jersey was retired by the school in 2015.
Terry’s outstanding college career with the Wildcats led to him being the 10th overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft.
Zion Williamson, Jayson Tatum and Paolo Banchero offered their guesses for Doncic since they went on Jordan Brand’s world tour with him.
Some schools mentioned: Texas A&M, USC, Florida and Duke. Tatum agreed that Arizona would have been a good fit.
Banchero offered an interesting story from his recruitment, saying former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is a huge fan of Doncic.
“He’s got Duke written all over him,” the former Blue Devil said. “That’s one of Coach K’s favorite players. I remember when he was recruiting me, it was during the bubble. He would call me and be like, ‘Are you watching? Are you watching Luka Doncic right now? You’ve got to go watch Luka. That’s who you’ve got to be like.’”
Back in 2014, the other Mavs European legend, Dirk Nowitzki revealed he would have played for Kentucky had he gone to college rather than jumping directly from Germany to the NBA.
“Since I’m a Kentucky guy – I visited Kentucky – so that was big for the boys. I’m happy for them,” Nowitzki said when the Wildcats made the Final Four at AT&T Stadium in 2014. He refers to the Wildcats as “We” and has fond memories of his recruiting visit there.
Nowitzki also visited Stanford and Cal, and joked that his grades might not have held up there.
“I visited Stanford,” he said. “I’m not sure I would have made it with my grades. I would have tried. Maybe they would have cheated for me a little bit. And I visited Cal. They would have pulled some strings.”
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