Keyshawn Johnson Says Luka Doncic Looks Like the Pillsbury Doughboy

LeBron James has the sports world zeroed in on the Los Angeles Lakers once more after he took over and led them to a 19-point fourth quarter comeback over the Los Angeles Clippers. It was like The King wound back the clock as he scored more points in the final frame (19) than the Clippers did as a team (16). It was an impressive win over a legitimate title contender that has everyone predicting the Lakers will make a run to the Western Conference Finals again, and before you laugh they all predicted the same thing last year and guess what the Lakers did?

The big victory has also resulted in a bunch of LeBron-centric programming on the studio shows today and Undisputed was no different. Skip Bayless gave LeBron his flowers and Keyshawn Johnson lauded his greatness. This led to a discussion about whether any current player was capable of eventually eclipsing his all-time scoring record. After passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar last season, LeBron currently sits at 39,960 points and doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon. He'll likely finish his career around the 45,000-point mark and will hit 40,000 by next week.

While going down the list of candidates who might be able to end up near there by the time they hang up the sneakers, Luka Doncic's name was brought up. Johnson was not optimistic, saying Doncic will never have a chance because he looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy and LeBron is cut from the same cloth as the Greek gods physically.

Weird body-shaming aside you can sort of see his point. LeBron is basically the perfect basketball player physically. Not only could he jump higher and run faster than anybody in the league for most of his career, he played at least 70 games in 13 of his first 15 seasons. Before coming to Los Angeles the most games he missed in any season was 20. The high ankle sprain he suffered in the 2018-2019 season was the first "serious" injury of his career. Perhaps above all else his endurance is the most impressive aspect of his NBA career.

Luka does not have that. Very few players do. He's missed at least 10 games in every season of his career and averaged around 65 games played in the first five years of his career. He also has never suffered a serious injury but, like most athletes, the accumulation of bumps and bruises eventually takes its toll. Then you take into account that today's NBA emphasizes rest and load management, a concept that really only became popular in LeBron's final years in his second Cleveland stint, and the biggest obstacle to Luka ever coming close to the all-time scoring record is merely opportunity rather than his output.

It is possible to have that conversation without calling Luka the Pillsbury Doughboy, because how he looks is not entirely relevant. John Stockton is one of the league's most famous iron men, playing every single game in 17 of his 18 seasons, and he didn't exactly look like Adonis. The best player in basketball right now, Nikola Jokic, is more physically similar to the guys down at the YMCA than his teammates.

Such nuance probably shouldn't be expected out of Undisputed, but nevertheless. Luka's chances at becoming the NBA's longtime scoring leader are slim, but not because he isn't jacked.