What did Luka Doncic’s body language tell us during his press conference? We asked an expert

DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers have held press conferences regarding the shocking Luka Doncic trade. 

Mavericks General Manager Nico Harrison and head coach Jason Kidd fielded questions from the media on Sunday, while Luka Doncic had his introductory press conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday. 

Body language expert Melinda Marcus came to the WFAA studios in Dallas to break down the press conferences from both sides.

Watch the full interview with body language expert here:

Melinda Marcus told WFAA her expertise was in the area of verbal communications, and she was doing that in an advertising and marketing firm, where they were setting up “how do you persuade” in that sense on behalf of corporations and hospitals.

Then, Marcus said, she got exposed to nonverbal communications through an expert she heard speak and later started studying it. She said it took about five years of studying that field with experts.

“It struck me that there was one person I really wanted to work with and that was the former special agent that actually trained the FBI on nonverbal behavior,” Marcus said. “His name is Joe Navarro, so I reached out to him and it turned out that he was willing to work with me one-on-one. We worked together for close to three years, and at the end of that, he gave me a [Master-level Instructor Certification] in body language and nonverbal behavior.”

Marcus said both [nonverbal and verbal communication] are important.

“However, when you see a disconnect between what’s said and what’s shown, you should believe what’s shown,” Marcus said. “It’s very easy for people to manipulate their words and sometimes it’s not necessarily an unethical thing, it’s something where they don’t wanna have any kind of fight with you, or they’re trying to please you or tell you what you wanna hear. So sometimes people will just say things that they’re trying to be nice about it, but it’s not what they really feel. And so, what happens is the unconscious leaks what the true feeling is and most people are not very aware of those leaks.”

Marcus told WFAA she loves looking at sports because people are highly emotionally charged. 

“So, you’re gonna see a lot of those leaks,” Marcus said. “Especially when someone just had a big loss or whether somebody had a big win or there’s some kind of controversy going on.”

With Doncic , Marcus said “there was a real sadness.” 

“[Doncic] looked very down and we see that in his posture,” Marcus said. “We see that he sort of collapsed down and also in some cases he even has his head hanging down. And what you really want to do with nonverbals is make sure you understand what someone’s normal baseline is.”

“If that was [Doncic’s] normal baseline, there would be nothing that would be unusual about that, but I looked at interviews he’s had in other circumstances and I didn’t see that,” Marcus added. “So, that’s how we know there’s a change and the change then can be attributed to the emotional shift. And he has verbally said this was very hurtful to him and a real shock to him, so really his nonverbals and his verbals about that are aligned.”

“So in the Jason Kidd interview, particularly at the beginning, we see a frequency of stress signals, and we don’t see that in other interviews with him,” Marcus said. 

Marcus noted motions like using his hand to rub his face, cover his mouth, ventilate his collar, which she noted are indicators of being under stress.

“Then a full hand on the neck at one point and that really is relatively rare unless somebody’s under high stress,” Marcus said.

Another subtle cue Marcus noted was Kidd rubbing the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

“That’s also a way that the unconscious is trying to calm [Kidd] down,” according to Marcus.

Another small nonverbal cue Marcus noted that people may not have caught was continuous shoulder shrugging.

“The key is we’re looking at what’s being said verbally and what’s being shown nonverbally. And at that time, [Doncic] was saying how he’s really excited about the move and when he says that he shows a shoulder shrug,” Marcus said. “And that’s saying that the unconscious is saying I’m not so sure about this. So that’s another case of when you see a disconnect between what’s said and what’s shown, believe what’s shown.”

Marcus showed WFAA that when Doncic held up the Lakers jersey at the end of the press conference, it was so low that you couldn’t see it in the camera shot with all of the reporters standing in the way.

“If you look at most players when they join a team, even senior players that are coming over that are already experienced, not just the kids out of college, they’re carrying it up [high], not down by your waist, and that I think is a subtle unconscious thing that ‘I’m not really excited about this’,” Marcus said.

Marcus said Pelinka showed a high sense of confidence when he was talking about the deal in the Lakers press conference. But, she said he also showed some stress signals, too.

“There was something that was happening that we actually call kind of a ‘cleanse.’ [Pelinka] had his full hand on his thigh, and you’ll notice he was rubbing that. And again, that is the unconscious saying ‘I need to get rid of the stress I’m feeling’ and so it uses that repetitive behavior to kind of release some of that energy.”

Doncic’s behavior shifted in the press conference when he was asked about head coach J.J. Reddick and being on his podcast a few years ago. The positive relationship Doncic has with Reddick was evident in his smile and his answer, Marcus said.

Another positive moment from the press conference, Marcus said, was when Doncic was asked about the players who had reached out to him in wake of the trade.

“When he was talking about the players calling him and telling him they were glad he was coming on board and that kind of thing, he did get a smile there but boy it was very short … very short. It was there and it was disappeared,” Marcus said.

“I would say that, generally speaking, [Doncic is] not somebody who kind of sits up straight as we all should. But most of us don’t, right? [Doncic] generally doesn’t because I looked again at other interviews, but I’ve never seen him with his head hung low, and here he did do that,” Marcus said. “So I think that’s a difference. That’s not his norm. So I think it’s significant. It was almost like he’s in mourning.” 

Marcus said if you look at what he said both in his letter to Dallas and what he has said in other interviews, he “feels really sad about a forced move which he had no say in.”

So it sounds like from from what you’ve shared of between Jason Kidd and Niko Harrison and Rob Polinka and Lukadachic, the person who sounded most sure of themselves through their nonverbal language was Nico Harrison.

Marcus said the two people who showed the most confident body language in these press conferences were Harrison and Pelinka.

“I did not see that level of comfort and confidence coming from Jason Kidd and certainly I did not see it from Luka,” Marcus said. “So I think that, there’s also probably hurt feelings about not being consulted. And I think that’s hard. Then one other piece of this is the psychology piece, and that deals in ‘what influenced this decision?’ So, it’s interesting both general managers told stories by which they didn’t initiate it but the other guy did.” did you pick that up?” 

Marcus said it was interesting that neither general manager wanted to take responsibility for initiating the conversation about the trade.

“We do know that they both said this is gonna be just between us, not the owners, not the players, not the coaches or anybody else. So they feel good about it because it was their deal, and they both came away with something that they felt satisfied with. But for the other people, it’s kind of hurtful and really Luka even mentions how loyalty is a big deal for him. So he felt that he had that for the Mavericks, and he felt, I think from what I heard a hurt that he felt betrayed from that loyalty.”

We noted that Pelinka and Doncic were the only two people on the stage, where at times, the head coach is also included. Marcus attributed that to Reddick not “being in the circle” in regards to the deal.

“So they were respectful in talking about [Reddick], but for whatever reason, they didn’t see him as part of the key discussion and interview,” Marcus said. “Because they knew it was highly controversial. Obviously, I think it’s being received way more positively on the LA side than the Dallas side.”

There was a moment when Harrison brought up talking not looping in Kidd to the deal. Marcus said that moment was really interesting because Kidd did not show the nonverbal cues of agreement that Harrison was claiming.

“If there was agreement by Kidd on that, you would expect him to have a little nod as the general manager is talking, right? But he didn’t. He was stone faced. He didn’t move an inch. Nothing moved on his face. Not his lips, not his eyes, don’t even think he blinked,” Marcus said. “It was really almost like a deer in the headlight type of thing of not wanting to acknowledge that from both a conscious and unconscious level.”

Marcus said, as a survival skill, our unconscious – everyone whether you’re trained or not in body language – is getting an impression and usually it’s right.

“We may not be able to pinpoint ‘oh he had his tongue in his cheek,’ but what they do have is ‘that didn’t feel right’ or ‘somehow I don’t believe that he believes what he just said’ or ‘boy that person seems uncomfortable.’ And anybody can be trained in this but naturally if we’ll listen to our instincts pick up that something was off,” Marcus said.

“You look at what is the psychology behind doing this without the owners knowing … without the coaches knowing … without even having even one conversation with the player? And it comes out of something that we call in the persuasive psychology arena, it’s called scarcity. One of the things that we did hear from Nico was that ‘look, time was running out’ and we were getting close to a time where Luka could make the decision,” Marcus said.

Marcus thinks that situation pressed Harrison to make a deal – even though many don’t believe it was the best deal for the Mavs in terms of what they got in the trade for Doncic.

“It sounds like what was happening on the general manager side is not having that same sense of trust and loyalty that Luka had. Obviously, we’ve seen in the past where somebody like Dirk, who was in a similar position, was willing to say ‘hey look, I will take a cut so that we can have better team people with me here.’ And they never gave Luca that chance,” Marcus said. “I really do think that is where the hurt comes because he never had even an inkling that this is where it was going. But I think what was driving Nico’s decision is ‘we got to move before [Doncic] does, so that’s unfortunate.”

Will the way that Dallas handled this Doncic trade affect their ability to bring top free agents in the future?

“One of the things that Luka said is he got a lot of phone calls from players like Steph Curry and all these guys who said that to him. It’s like none of us have any say in this anymore, and I think the way this was handled created a real sense of distrust between players and general managers,” Marcus said.