When Luka Dončić dropped 73 points on the Atlanta Hawks in January – the fourth-most individual points in NBA history – Dallas head coach Jason Kidd was asked if his star player’s prodigious scoring performance threatened to disrupt the Mavericks’ game plan. “He’s the game plan,” Kidd replied.
For much of these finals, that game plan, like the man it was aimed at, seemed decidedly questionable. The Mavericks looked unbalanced, dangerously over-reliant on their star guard pairing, and Dončić himself – with injuries to both knee and chest – was in the middle of a historic run of stinkers on defense. images of him lazily swatting on the ball as the Celtics blew him repeatedly on offense threatened to become the visual summary of the entire final. But in Game 4, Dallas annihilated Boston by the third-largest margin of victory in NBA Finals history, reversing the pattern of the series with scrambling, urgent basketball on both ends of the court; suddenly it was the Mavericks, and not the Celtics, who wrote all the blow-bys, authoritative dunks in transition and nifty cameos off the bench. The sweep is averted. A once dying series has come to life in an exciting way. And most importantly, the Mavs’ main man is back.
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In fairness, this was also a win for Dallas’ supporting cast, who were comfortably outclassed by the Celtics through the first three games but looked much more confident on Friday night. The extremely promising – and extremely hairy – 20-year-old Dereck Lively uncorked his second double-double in a row, center Daniel Gafford got into the scoring drive with a flashy alley-oop, and the Mavs’ Australian mafia, Josh Green and Dante Exum, produced his best performance in a while, Green a terrier in defense and Exum murderously cool from mid-range. Tim Hardaway Jr. closed the final minutes of the game with a series of casual threes. Kyrie Irving, the McCartney to Dončić’s Lennon, was efficient in attack, although for someone who struggles terribly at the TD Gardenpressure grows to put on big numbers as Dallas travels to Boston with the goal of extending the series.
Irving said after Game 3 that his message to Dončić was “he is not alone in this”, and it showed. Dončić himself seemed to raise his level in response to the improvement of those around him. Before the match he had spoken about the need to ‘start having fun again’, and that was on full display here, the snarling, the begging and the whining – the arms outstretched, the facial expression a model of shock in silent comedy – of the series’ first three games replaced with smiles and nods and winks to his teammates and bench. This was basketball as therapy, a solution to the problems that have brought the Mavericks to the brink of finals humiliation. And it worked. Where was this version of Luka in the first three games?
As an attacking threat, Dončić was as reliable as ever throughout these finals, and he again top-scored in Game 4 for the third time in the series. But at American Airlines Center, it was his defense that was the real surprise. The Celtics targeted the Mavs’ star relentlessly over the first three games, and for Dallas fans, the statistic looked bleak: Over the course of the first three Finals games, the Celtics blew past Dončić on 67.7% of their drives against him – the highest purge rate conceded by one defenseman in a play-off series in the last decade. But in the three quarters he completed on Friday evening (he was rested in the final quarter after defeat was assured), all the vulnerability and flappiness of the first three games was forgotten. Dončić has never had a problem with aggravating himself against the opposition, but here he showed the weight, authority and discipline in defense to make his whiny tally, limiting Jayson Tatum to 15 points and the main attacking threat of the Celtics from the game.
In many ways, this was Luka Dončić’s complete performance, a perfect advertisement for his rich and brutally discernible talent. Dončić is not as unlikely a basketball star as someone like Nikola Jokić, the human athletic marvel whose physique and presence on the court seem not only unsuited to professional sports, but also a rejection of everything professional sports are about. But the Slovenian has some of the cheerful, beat-up physicality of his Serbian counterpart; like Jokić, he is basketball’s version of a found object.
Dončić trudges across half the court with the off-balanced awkwardness of someone who has just learned to dribble, or possibly even walk, and then it all somehow comes together: a casually bracing three dropping from well beyond the perimeter; a butt turn; a deceptively quick step back; a lob off the glass through traffic and free throws secured as his markers spread like tenpins on strike. As with all great players, Dončić always seems to have time – time to shoot, make a pass, plan his next move, address the referees. Like a good piece of roasted Texas brisket, Dončić’s shot is low and slow: even when the ball leaves his hands, especially from distance, it moves at almost half speed, as if momentarily besieged by the heaviness of his aim , a malicious shooter. fly thundering to the edge.
Together, Irving and Dončić form the most energetic guard partnership in the league. The contrast in styles is part of what makes them so fun to look at. Irving is a paragon of classicism and elegance, so smooth in his handling that he sometimes seems to dissolve into it, creating a kind of ephemerality. He launches the ball from distance in beautiful, daggering arcs and fillets defenses with both hands under the glass; his scoring shots often seem as if they should score extra points, like a gymnast’s routine, because of their visual perfection. Luka isn’t like that. Irving is crystal; Dončić is a brick. Irving always strives for the most extreme angle of execution (an “ethical basketball player,” as commentator JJ Reddick described him in these finales), as if difficulties will push his production to a higher level of beauty; Dončić wants his points, however he can find them. Where Irving grumbles when things don’t go his way, Dončić rails against everyone and everything, using his unabated anger as an offensive enemy, an incentive for all those brutal threes and crazy fadeaways.
He’s got the look of a teenager still growing into his body, and the after-school buzzcut to match. In many ways, Dončić plays like a playground shark: he is whiny, ruthless and constantly in the opposition’s face. To the opposition, his enduring brilliance – that tingling specialness, the mounting sense of anticipation that grips the arena whenever he has the ball in his hands – is made all the more infuriating by his relentless chippiness. That verbal gift, let’s call it that, was kept in check on Friday but was on glorious display in these finals, perhaps most memorably when Dončić took a step back three on the Timberwolves’ defensive giant Rudy Gobert and against the Frenchman roared, “You I can’t fucking protect myself!”
As stacked and jacked as his scoring numbers are, pure statistical accumulation is ultimately not what makes this Ljubljana-made hero of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex so entertaining. Dončić is the rare basketball player whose hands – as supple and dexterous as they are – are the least interesting part of his anatomy. Luka is all head, knees, ass and lip, so much lip – a piece of pure Slovenian beef, joints and glutes working his way through the forest of the opposition defence. Many believe Dončić should have been crowned this season’s MVP. Whether he is the best player in the NBA right now is a topic of debate on social media, but there is little doubt that he is the most effective basketball player. I can’t vouch for the methodological rigor of this stat, but at least half of his points seem to come from the back end, that signature Dončić punch into the paint providing the separation needed to get all that ta-da- perform fadeaways, slipknot passes and brutal hooks. Where does this man’s butt go, so go the Mavericks. Now Dallas will be hoping Dončić’s anatomical fixture can replicate Friday night’s form in Boston.
Dirk Nowitzki, Mark Wahlberg and Patrick Mahomes were among the celebrities on the pitch during these finals, but the real contrast between the two teams can be seen in the drivers from the world of European football. For Boston, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola – who befriended young Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla – was at TD Garden for Game 1, while Real Madrid legend Sergio Ramos was in Dallas last night to cheer on his friend Dončić. Ramos is much better in defense than Luka, but there is a clear stylistic affinity between the two men: both are crazy, cunning, brilliant and always push the boundaries of fair play. The Celtics, for their part, are the closest thing to a Guardiola-esque ensemble in the NBA: a team where every action is anticipated and every player knows his place, a team that achieves a kind of bloodless perfection through scientific management.
Until last night, Boston’s system basketball – planned, regimented and perhaps a little boring – seemed comfortably superior. But the loss in Dallas suggests that virtuoso basketball – explosive, unpredictable, dependent on passion and individual talent to succeed – can still command the court today. No team has ever come from 3-0 down to win an NBA championship. If Dallas manages to climb that mountain, it will be the ultimate triumph of individual virtuosity over collective effort. And at the center of it all – sometimes furious, sometimes smiling, but always pushing, chirping, elbowing and leaning towards greatness – will be Dončić, maestro of the metroplex, gluteus maximus, the biggest mouth in the modern NBA.