{"id":613058,"date":"2026-04-29T10:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T10:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/613058\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T10:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T10:07:08","slug":"luka-doncic-and-the-manosphere-why-the-scrutiny-of-his-body-never-ends-luka-doncic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/613058\/","title":{"rendered":"Luka Don\u010di\u0107 and the manosphere: why the scrutiny of his body never ends | Luka Don\u010di\u0107"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Louis Theroux\u2019s Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere<\/a>, he interviews podcasters, streamers and influencers from across the Red Pill ecosystem<\/a>. But the most profound moments are when he speaks with their followers. Regular, everyday American men who struggle to make a living, find love, get laid and start a family.<\/p>\n

One of them is a Latino man in his 20s living in Miami. He explains that Andrew Tate\u2019s message helped pull him out of homelessness. What stuck with him wasn\u2019t Tate\u2019s aggressive bravado or rampant misogyny, but a simple idea: as a man, you start with no inherent value \u2013 you have to build it. On its face, it sounds like basic self-help. Beneath it is something harsher: a belief among those in the manosphere that worth is conditional, something that must be earned through performance, discipline and visible results. Under their logic, a \u201csuccessful\u201d man has a harem of women, luxury cars and a body bulging with muscles.<\/p>\n

That message doesn\u2019t just live online. You can see it in sports, especially in how we talk about athletes\u2019 bodies. This kind of scrutiny isn\u2019t new in sports. For decades, female athletes have lived under a similar microscope. Evaluated not just for what they do, but how they look while doing it<\/a>. Now, men are being pulled into the same dynamic. The standards aren\u2019t identical, but the mechanism is.<\/p>\n

Luka Don\u010di\u0107 has become one of the clearest subjects of the scrutiny. Ever since he entered the NBA in 2018, it\u2019s been clear that the Slovenian is a Hall of Fame talent. But for all his ability, conversation around him has drifted away from what he does on the court and toward what his body \u2013 Don\u010di\u0107 has never had the ripped physique of the stereotypical athlete \u2013 supposedly says about him.<\/p>\n

In Dallas, he led \u2013 some would say carried \u2013 the Mavericks to the 2024 NBA finals. But long before then, the whispers had started about his \u201cconditioning\u201d and \u201cdurability\u201d. It began with chatter about his love of hookah<\/a> and fluctuating weight while in Dallas, before being used as the raison d\u2019\u00eatre for the since-fired Mavericks general manager, Nico Harrison, trading him to the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Don\u010di\u0107 is far from a perfect player. He argues with refs<\/a>, confronts opponents<\/a>, is suspect on defense<\/a> and has a propensity for hero-ball and, yes, is prone to niggling injuries. But the extra weight he carried \u2013 for an athlete mind you, not for a guy off the street \u2013 was seen as a symbol of his flaws. Just like the manosphere influencers, the basketball world portrays his supposed physical imperfections as proof of some internal failing.<\/p>\n

But the Red Pill race is unwinnable: there\u2019s always one more bodybuilding supplement to buy, one more luxury car to show you\u2019ve made it to the top of the pyramid. And this twisted logic is played out more widely in how Don\u010di\u0107 is viewed. At the start of this season, there was a frenzy after he appeared on the cover of Men\u2019s Health<\/a> displaying the kind of body we were told he should have had all along. He went on to play like a demon, leading the NBA in points per game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But even then, Don\u010di\u0107 could not win. In February, on The Hoop Collective podcast, Tim MacMahon discussed the Lakers\u2019 problems this season, saying: \u201cIf there\u2019s a \u2018blame pie\u2019, [Don\u010di\u0107] can have a slice of it, but there\u2019s plenty to go around.\u201d His co-host, Brian Windhorst, joked: \u201cLuka likes pie.\u201d There was still gossip about a custody battle with his former partner over their children. Then, when Don\u010di\u0107 strained his hamstring as the playoffs approached, and reportedly scoured Europe for a cure<\/a>, the narrative flipped from \u201che\u2019s lazy\u201d to \u201che\u2019s too driven\u201d<\/a>. The injury brings the vultures back to the carcass. If he rushes back and fails, they will blame his \u201cconditioning\u201d. If he stays out to protect his future, they will blame his \u201cheart\u201d.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to the man in Miami. He is attracted to figures like Tate because he wants to be seen. He is told he can gain worth and value if he just works hard, gets ripped and keeps grinding. But even a millionaire athlete can\u2019t win that war in the modern landscape. In sports, out of sports, people are drifting apart. To make it worse, we don\u2019t even have a common language to talk about any more. Everything has become a political statement. Look at Don\u010di\u0107. He can weave through double teams and control the entire court, yet we get stuck arguing about his body fat. Yapping about his relationship troubles.<\/p>\n

In that sense, the manosphere and the sports mainstream are not so far apart. In both, value is something that must be constantly demonstrated \u2013 and is just as easily called into question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Louis Theroux\u2019s Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere, he interviews podcasters, streamers and influencers from across the Red…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-613058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}