KATOWICE, Poland — It’s mid-morning, and one of the best basketball players in the world is in the middle of leading his tiny country deeper into the European basketball championships. Twenty-seven floors above the hotel lobby, Luka Dončić walks to the table near the floor-length windows, plops down on a chair and, within minutes, is sipping on a double espresso.

This is what a controlled fresh start looks like — the day beginning the way he and his team want, with a hot coffee and a great view as the first chapters of a day that will end with Dončić scoring 26 points for Slovenia against a pesky but mostly helpless Icelandic national team.

The days this summer, first in Poland and later in Latvia, were a preview of what’s to come for Dončić, a player returning to peak form after an injury and shocking trade combined to knock him off track in the most severe way he’d experienced in his professional career.

Now, as he returns to Los Angeles to begin training camp with the Lakers next week, Dončić has fully turned the page on a season that changed his life forever.

“This,” Doncic tells The Athletic, “feels like a start for me.”

It’s unquestionably the Lakers’ good fortune that they’re getting Dončić, 26, at this moment. The five-time first-team All-NBA megastar reinvented himself physically at the start of the summer before looking like the most dominant player in all of Europe.

Jeanie Buss, Rob Pelinka, Kurt and Linda Rambis and Dr. Leroy Sims, the team’s director of player performance and health, all flew to Poland to witness the reboot first-hand.

“He just looked comfortable,” Buss told The Athletic. “His focus was on basketball instead of something else being in the back of mind. He’s less burdened; he’s got clarity. …He knows where he wants to be. He knows where he is now.”

He’s committed to the Lakers — fresh off a three-year extension signed on the first day the Lakers could offer it to him. He has the third-best odds to win the NBA’s MVP award, behind only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokić. He has the marketing power of Jordan Brand, the global brand recognition of the Lakers and on-court charisma to spare — a face so suited to lead a franchise that he instantly displaced 40-year-old LeBron James as the organization’s guiding star.

“ He’s sort of like an illusionist,” Pelinka said in Poland. “He does things on the court that you can’t fully understand unless you’re live at the game.”

The fresh start is reason for optimism — the timing perfectly lined up for Dončić to take his stardom to an even higher level for basketball’s biggest show.

“Big stages are, you know, made for, I say, people with big character,” Dončić said.

But unlike most beginnings, this one got a trial run. Joining the Lakers in February gave Dončić a sense of what life in Los Angeles would be like. After the Dallas Mavericks traded him but before he debuted for his new team, the Lakers had him come to mid-court to be introduced to fans like a European footballer seeing his new club’s supporters. His first actual game in Los Angeles was a major event, with No. 77 golden Lakers shirts sitting on every seat in the building (and on James’ back during pregame warmups).

The trade that sent him to Los Angeles, though, left visible bruises all over Dončić. He carried extra weight from a calf injury that had shut him down for more than a month. His opening news conference with the Lakers was more notable for how shocked he still looked than for anything he actually said.

As he took the court for his new team, Dončić was able to sprinkle in some “Luka magic” — look-ahead passes to James, behind-the-back feeds to Austin Reaves, lobs to Jaxson Hayes, a “how-did-he-do-that” dime to Gabe Vincent and more than a handful of stepback 3s on the left wing.

After he joined the team, the Lakers beat the Denver Nuggets, LA Clippers and Houston Rockets twice and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks once. But the Lakers’ lifeless postseason — their offense cracked 100 points just twice in five games against Minnesota — made contention feel like it was far away.

“That’s how we could play,” Dončić said of the highs. “But I don’t think we played like this in the playoffs.”

The physical changes after the season were obvious — a physical transformation landed him on the cover of “Men’s Health” magazine and the improved burst to the basket (and even on the defensive end) that put him on the EuroBasket All-Star team, even though Slovenia lost in the quarterfinals. The mental ones were subtler.

Edo Murić, Dončić’s Slovenian teammate and close friend, says the NBA star has emerged as a stronger leader. In the NBA context, it meant Dončić taking on a more pronounced role in recruiting free agents like Deandre Ayton and Marcus Smart. With the national team, it meant adjusting standards for a roster that couldn’t match his talent.

“Every year, he’s more vocal and even more patient with the players because he’s coming from a different level than we are,” Murić said. “And sometimes (the mistakes), it’s not acceptable for him. Maybe he used to expect too much from us because he comes from another world that we come from, you know?

“But now as he’s maturing as he’s older, he gets that. And he’s giving us more and more trust.”

Dončić acknowledged that at this stage of his career, for his teams to be as good as possible, he needed to speak up.

“I mean, it was probably just something I need to do — especially since I’ve seen a lot of basketball now,” Dončić said. “So I’ve been through a lot — so it was kind of something like, I need to do this to help, to help others.”

Even if that means yelling about a blown coverage in a timeout or encouraging his teammates to get off the bench and cheer a good play by a teammate.

“(Being a leader), sometimes it’s comfortable, sometimes not,” he said. “Sometimes it’s great to be a leader and sometimes you have to say things that you don’t want to, but that’s part of being a leader.”

Dončić’s success this summer wasn’t just Slovenia’s — it was also a win for the Lakers, who again got to see one of their players take part in the biggest games of the summer.

“The idea that he is a Laker, it connects us. It’s a global thread,” Buss said. “I can’t think of a better representation of Laker basketball than Luka and what he brings to the game. To see it in a different context, a European tournament, it just feels very similar to Kobe or LeBron in the Olympics or Magic Johnson with the Dream Team.“

New mindset, new body, new appreciation for his new team — it all seems to have lined up for Dončić as he walks into this opportunity, a chance to prove his former team wrong, to reinforce the importance of his offseason work and sacrifice and a chance to become an even bigger superstar on the stage the Lakers can give.

“I’m way comfortable,” he said with a grin. “Especially going to training camp, you know, having practice with the guys — like I said, it’s a start for me.

“But I will feel way more comfortable now.”

And that should make plenty of other people in the Lakers’ way a little uncomfortable.

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