The Wonder Boy

Luka Doncic and the Curse of Greatness

De: Tim MacMahon

Narrado por: Tim MacMahon, Charles Constant

ESPN’s Tim MacMahon chronicles the career of the Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Doncic and examines the pressure of building an NBA team around a prodigy.

In 2018, the Dallas Mavericks landed the most hyped European teen prospect in basketball history—Luka Doncic, who has proven to be a generational NBA talent with a flair for sensational playmaking. But that’s only half the story. With The Wonder Boy, MacMahon takes us beyond the highlights to the madness that ensues as the Mavericks try to avoid blowing their golden opportunity.

From the internal power struggles in owner Mark Cuban’s front office during the early years of Doncic’s career, to the new regime’s effort to earn Doncic’s loyalty and put the ruthless competitor in position to win, readers will learn never-before-reported details about the saga’s biggest moments, including:

• the blockbuster deal for Kristaps Porzingis that blew up in the Mavs’ faces
• the divorces with coach Rick Carlisle and GM Donnie Nelson
• Jalen Brunson’s exit after a run to the Western Conference finals
• the new pairing with the mercurial Kyrie Irving
• the improbable journey to the 2024 Finals

As the clock ticks on the Mavs’ quest to win it all with their irreplaceable young star, The Wonder Boy pulls back the curtain on a dilemma every NBA team would love to have.©2024 Tim MacMahon (P)2024 Twelve

Please pick better narrators

I love Tim MacMahon. I think his insights are fantastic and he understands how to plant the seeds of a story with small details that lead to incredible importance later on. The intro (in his own voice) discussing the draft and all of the players and executives that will have significant meaning later on is expertly done. And he has a great voice that would work for this audiobook (I’m sure Bontemps would make a joke about a look for radio, but I would never).

All that said, this narrator is offensive. Why didn’t MacMahon narrate this himself? Here are some mispronunciations over the first few chapters:
-Celtics with a hard C
-Rudy Gobert that rhymes with Dilbert
-Deron Williams like this narrator assumes black names have to be pronounced with extra emphasis
-I don’t know how the f to describe what he does with Haralabos Voulgaris

I can’t listen to this garbage anymore. But to support MacMahon, Im going to buy a hardcopy because I very much appreciate the work

Exceptional attention to detail both on and off the court.

What captivated me about this book was its detailed unraveling of the Mavericks organization’s journey, both on and off the court. The author expertly weaves the timeline together, using creative storytelling techniques that really bring the events to life.

All Questions Answered

Finally a legit book on the dallas mavs. All of my questions I’ve had since Cuban bought the team have been answered. Great insights into how the nba works and what teams do to keep their stars. This book delivers and more. I don’t get all these soft mavs fans bashing the author. Finally we get an in-depth, researched and sourced book on our fav team, and these weak people bash the author. We should be thanking him. Thanks for the book ban, all the hate you deal w for speaking the truth is crazy. Keep fighting the good fight. Love love love the book.

Nothing new + last chapter missing

The author did not get a chance to talk to Luka or anyone remotely close to Luka, because no one from that group wanted to talk to him. So in turn he is basically chronologically listing what has happened in games and who said what in interviews. Very little new info- questionable whether it really happened because again - as always - the author turns to unnamed sources. The focus of the book is more on how dysfunctional the Mavs org actually was than Luka. Book is right now missing the last chapter that was written after the trade. Audiable, hallo?!

Poorly done.

They should’ve stuck with Windhorst. Multiple errors that should’ve been caught during editing. Very little information that wasn’t already widely known.