A weekly dive into the NBA’s hottest topics.

1. Luka Doncic is the game’s next great innovator

You are supposed to pick a highlight here and describe it, typically — a play so exquisite that it encapsulates and puts a bow on all the others. You can’t put a bow on Luka Doncic, though, and that’s precisely the point: Every new play is a stepping stone to something newer.

Doncic himself, who walks in the footsteps of creative giants, is proof of that. The 3-and-rim-centric shot chart that James Harden built with focus and vision — and through great consternation — is a blueprint for modern wings. For Doncic, it’s a playground, where the fluidity of his deceptive skills contrasts with Harden’s tight, formulaic maneuvers. Doncic is picking up where Manu Ginobili left off: stamping his insights on the game by taking risks that pissed his coach off before eventually wearing him down, expanding the game’s possibilities by pushing at its parameters, getting himself into messes just to find his way out.

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Through 14 games, he is putting up 29.9 points, grabbing 10.6 boards and dishing out 9.4 assists per game. On Monday, he served the Spurs a 42-point triple-double and then followed it up with a 35-point triple-double against the Warriors on Wednesday.

Doncic moves precisely but in flow. He’s convincing, because he really is making last-minute decisions. Every step-back could be a pump-fake. Every pump-fake could be a jumpshot. Every jumpshot could be a jump pass. Every pass could be a floater. Every floater could be pass. Every pass is a look-away, because the powers of

deception are infinite. They don’t need to be tempered. Doncic’s deceptive tactics are not a series of moves. They are a habit of mind, developed in a wholly different basketball environment in Slovenia, and later, Real Madrid.

Ginobili, unlike Doncic, had to reel himself in, playing alongside two stars in the Spurs’ egalitarian system. Doncic is coming of age in the high-usage NBA. He is next in a lineage of innovators, and he has more free rein than almost anyone at his age. You could, if you wanted to egregiously miss the point here, bring up the high turnover rate of a 20-year old averaging near a triple-double. But I trust you, so let’s just appreciate the fact that a player with his potential has a green light, and move on.

Creative success, the players before Doncic taught us, begs for imitation. And Doncic’s creativity has already led to so much success that we know it will be instructive. With every new move made, every new angle discovered, Doncic is building the game’s future.

Consider what he’s doing in this very moment: garnering unfair comparisons to legends and inciting the anger of their fans, which are rites of passage of their own.

The repeated term “first player since LeBron James to …” will soon become rote, but for now, every new record is an affirmation of his potential, and the better he is, the more the game itself will evolve. But gaudy stats have become routine in the modern NBA. What makes this moment special is the glaring awareness that in the passing of every successive game, Doncic is building the future. Watching him find himself is like watching a baby taking his or her first steps on Mars.