Colin Cowherd isn’t buying into the Luka Doncic body-transformation buzz the way everyone else is.
The Los Angeles Lakers have spent the offseason drawing plenty of attention for their roster moves, but Doncic’s latest physical reset has become the bigger talking point. He’s reportedly carrying the work he put in last summer into this year, and the pictures have only fueled the conversation about how he looks heading into the upcoming campaign.
Cowherd, though, made it clear on “The Herd” that he sees the whole thing differently.
“So there was a picture of Luka Doncic. He looks great, by the way,” Cowherd began.
“This is what he should look like: tall and very lean. His fans are buzzing about his offseason transformation.
He looks terrific. He looks like Bradley Cooper, actually, with a headband a little bit on, doesn’t he?
He looks fantastic.”
Then came the pushback.
“Let me just say this. Offseason, your sleep is less interrupted.
You’re not having midnight dinners. Your diet should be good.
This is what you should look like as a pro athlete. After a season, you take a couple of weeks off, and you have less disrupted sleep and diet.
This should not be a big story. The last four years, Luka has played fewer games than 41-year-old LeBron James and 38-year-old Kevin Durant… He’s averaging 62 games a season.
That’s not good.”
That’s the heart of Cowherd’s argument: this is what elite athletes are supposed to look like when the season ends and the body gets a little breathing room. He framed it as a baseline, not a breakthrough.
Still, Doncic’s makeover isn’t just window dressing. Last season, the 27-year-old’s work on his conditioning paid off in a big way, and he backed it up with production that jumped off the page: 33.5 points, 7.7 rebounds, 8.3 assists, and 1.6 steals per game. For a player who had drawn criticism for his weight and the way it affected his defensive effort, the shift mattered.
Cowherd acknowledged the visual change again, but stuck to the same point.
“When I see a picture of him slimmed down, and people are buzzing… Guys, that’s the baseline. I mean, he’s a handsome kid.
It very much is Bradley Cooper with a headband, but this is the baseline. This is what a pro athlete should look like.
We shouldn’t be buzzing every other year.”
Even so, the excitement around Doncic hasn’t faded. Videos from the Lakers’ trip to Slovenia have already gotten fans talking about the team’s chemistry and what that could mean once the games start. With Doncic now stepping into the role of the franchise’s clear face, the spotlight on him is only getting brighter.
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Still, the long-term question is hard to avoid. An ESPN poll of NBA insiders found that while most believe Doncic will stay beyond the 2026-27 season, a notable slice of experts think he could be on the move by then, and that kind of split only adds to the pressure around ownership changes and the teams competitiveness. The Lakers do not have to solve that tomorrow, but they do have to keep building a case that their present is strong enough to matter in his future. [Read more 🡒]