Doncic Crosses Sabonis Out of His Shoe and Points at It in Lakers Preseason Opener

Preseason games are supposed to produce one clip and nothing else, and the Lakers’ opener produced a very good one. Early in the second quarter in Sacramento, Luka Doncic sent Domantas Sabonis stumbling out of his shoe, stepped back for a three, and pointed at the sneaker lying on the court. Doncic scored 21 points in 16 minutes in a 127-103 win, in his first game in six months.

What exactly happened on the shoe play?

Doncic had Sabonis isolated, moved him with a dribble at the top of the floor, and the Kings centre stumbled badly enough that his shoe came completely off, Pro Football Network reports. Doncic stepped back and drained the three from the wing, then pointed down at the loose shoe, which is the detail that turned a good highlight into a viral one.

The broadcast sold it too. A commentator, trying to work out what was on the floor, wondered whether somebody had thrown a shoe, PFN reports. Sabonis was left to retrieve the sneaker and put it back on while the Lakers ran the other way with a lead that reached 73-47 by half-time.

Why did the clip travel so far, so fast?

Because it compresses the whole ankle-breaker genre into one frame. Plenty of defenders get crossed over; almost none lose a shoe in the process, and the scorer almost never stops to point at it. The captions wrote themselves, from BrickCenter’s summary of the sequence to fans joking that a defender has to retire after that, PFN reports.

It also landed in a preseason short on genuine moments. The same week has produced LeBron James denying a secondhand practice story about Joel Embiid in his first season away from Los Angeles, and Karl-Anthony Towns saying his Knicks extension talks do not look good. Against quote stories, a shoe on the floor is undefeated.

What made this more than a meme for the Lakers?

The player doing it, and the shape he was in. Doncic missed the Lakers’ playoff run in April with a hamstring injury and had not played competitive basketball in about six months, People reports. He returned visibly slimmer, and JJ Redick had already told reporters that Doncic actually ran and did sprint work over the summer and arrived in camp in fantastic shape, People reports.

The numbers matched the eye test for one half: 21 points, three assists, two steals and three threes in 16 minutes, PFN reports, on a night when Los Angeles made 20 three-pointers as a team. Doncic said afterwards that he felt great and that the team was moving faster, People reports. For a franchise now built entirely around him after James’s departure, that sentence matters more than the clip.

How is Sabonis likely to remember the night?

As four points and a photograph. Sacramento’s centre never got into the game, the Kings were down 26 by half-time, and his most shared moment of the evening was bending down to re-tie a light-blue shoe while the scorer pointed at it. There is no injury and no feud here, which is what makes it safe viral material: it is embarrassment, not harm.

If there is a basketball point inside the joke, it is the matchup itself. A centre switched onto a guard at the top of the floor is already beaten in most alignments; the shoe just made the geometry visible. Defenders have survived worse preseason moments than this one, including a scuffle inside five minutes of the Suns-Pistons opener that drew real fouls.

What happens next for Doncic and the Lakers?

Rest, first. Redick sat Doncic and six others for Tuesday’s back-to-back against Golden State, Sports Illustrated reports, with Austin Reaves nursing an ankle tweak and Walker Kessler a finger injury. Los Angeles does not play again until Thursday at home, and the regular season opens on October 21 against Golden State, PFN reports.

So the opener’s clip gets a few days to run on its own. That is the right fate for it: the first image of the post-James Lakers is not a huddle or a press conference, it is their new franchise player pointing at a shoe he had just knocked off an All-Star centre, in a league where even the first push-off call of a new rule emphasis becomes a story.