DALLAS — Less and less is being asked of Luka Doncic, and given the events of the past two days, Friday night’s Game 4 of the NBA Finals wasn’t about the Boston Celtics winning a championship or potentially capping off a historic season.
It was about a player with a pedigree who could catch stray balls and hollow points from all directions and force his coach to make an impassioned defense of his star player.
Yes, for Doncic it was the ultimate contradiction: more passion, less emotion; more focus on the court, less focus on the officials; more physical force, but less of a slow-paced style of play that disrupted Dallas’ offense.
All night, it was perhaps a sign of things to come or just a reprieve until the inevitable conclusion, but Doncic and the Mavericks avoided embarrassment with a commanding 122-84 victory in Game 4 at the American Airlines Center.
The tone of the game was set 90 minutes before kickoff when Mavericks coach Jason Kidd defended Doncic after the superstar had been panned in the media two days earlier, a criticism Kidd felt was a bit heavy-handed and over the top against a player of Doncic’s stature.
Kidd did so because he knows the relationship between coaches and players is under intense scrutiny in today’s NBA, and because Kidd has been on both sides.
“That’s my job, my job is to protect him and tell the truth,” Kidd told Yahoo Sports after the game. “I didn’t lie or do anything out of the ordinary. I just took it a little too far.”
By “we,” Kidd means the media, but Kidd felt Doncic was always a liability: His weight, his character as a basketball player and a host of other topics were apparently on trial even before Game 4 began.
“He’s never run from anything. He’s always sat there and answered,” Kidd told Yahoo Sports. “He’s dodged questions and dodged questions, but he’s sat there and answered the tough questions. People run and hide and disappear and he understands that, but he’s always been one to lead and that character and who he is was on full display tonight.”
If there was any uncertainty, any belief that the Mavericks would lose if they simply accepted Doncic celebrating in the hallway, it was dispelled early on.
If anyone believes the Mavericks can do the incredible thing and take this series back to Dallas and force an intriguing Game 6, it’s the belief that Doncic can put up another 25 points in the first half. He tormented smaller guards, mismatched big men and finished with 29 points, five rebounds and five assists. His night was over in the third quarter, because the night was already decided.
“We have to give it our all,” Doncic said. “We need energy, especially at the end of the season. We’ve had a lot of games. We have to stay together and stay focused.”
Tactically, with Dante Exum handling the ball a little more, Doncic has been able to move around more, shed his James Harden costume and take on responsibility all over the court.
If it can be replicated, that’s a different story. Until then, there will be even more frustration that this version didn’t come sooner, but perhaps the Mavs needed to be pushed to this depth of despair to change their ways.
“Maybe, but he’s a scorer,” Kidd said of the notion that Doncic is better off the ball. “He was moving and feeling good tonight, so he’s going to need that same feel in Boston.”
Even if this series ends the way most expect it to, this was a necessary night for Doncic in particular: a sweep would have been ugly, but not career-ruining.
It probably wouldn’t be an indelible stain on Doncic’s reputation, because better players have been in worse situations: Magic Johnson was once widely heralded as “tragic,” LeBron James repeatedly failed at the height of his career, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant suffered humiliation and discomfort.
The biggest lesson for Doncic is what this is all about. Unless he does the impossible and leads his team back from a 3-0 deficit. As the numbers show, the Celtics are one of the more historic teams we’ve seen in a short time. Four players are likely to be inducted into the Hall of Fame after the season. They’re also a team on the doorstep of the hallowed and almost newly inaugurated 80-20 club. So there’s no embarrassment in losing to a team that hasn’t lost much in over a month.
That’s why criticism of Doncic is often as jarring as it is valid, depending on who’s saying what. But Doncic’s greatness demands high expectations. He’s shown how to dominate the game with strength and skill, and it’s not unreasonable to expect him to work hard defensively, if only to ensure his teammates aren’t constantly at a disadvantage.
It’s tempting to say Dallas is slowly figuring out the Celtics, and the fact that Kristaps Porzingis missed another game despite being graded active by Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla could be seismic because he’s hard to guard and difficult to contain when he’s close to the rim.
But without him, Derek Lively II and Daniel Gafford could have a bit more fun for a while, at least on the margins.
And that’s what the Mavericks need to win this series again, even if it’s in Boston. I feel like they should have won Games 2 or 3, but they were a factor, if not the main culprit, in the loss, including Doncic.
It was Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown who struggled on the night. Doncic and Irving were on the same page all night, with Irving doing his best to lead without being overbearing towards his superstar teammate.
Kidd’s arrival to help Doncic didn’t go unnoticed.
“I think it just goes to show how important it is to have quality leadership in the locker room, someone who has experience, someone you can talk to,” said Irving, who had 21 points, six assists and four rebounds. “You also need someone who’s willing to sacrifice themselves to take the brunt of the bullets and the blame.”
“He knows how important it is for us to focus on the right things. We can’t focus on answering all of these unfair, critical questions. Some of them are fair, right? But it’s going to be hard for us to communicate when people are talking bad about our teammates when they’re not necessarily playing with us.”
The Mavericks organization is understandably defensive of Doncic, and every move the franchise has made thus far has been aimed at maximizing his development and making his future as bright as possible, including the Irving trade and stealth scouting that landed Lively II in the draft.
Given his temper tantrums with referees and other shortcomings that irritate even the most neutral basketball fan, he may not be an easy player to build a team around, and probably not an easy player to coach.
But he is still very special and worth keeping.
“He’s our little brother right now. He’s in the Finals. He’s going to make mistakes,” Irving said. “And that’s why I had such soft feelings towards myself after the game. I’m not going to go up to Luka and say, ‘It’s all your fault.’ We don’t do that in our locker room. We don’t want to start those bad habits now. I’ve been on teams before where we allowed the media and opinions to seep into what we did and it didn’t work.”
Kidd stayed consistent, instead of changing his message too much to stray too far from what got the team there, and the team responded.
Doncic responded, and Irving said the Slovenian silenced his critics all night, but the opponent here is the Celtics, not the critics, and the pendulum of emotion could swing back the other way within 48 hours.
“So, nothing changes. Like I said at the beginning of the series, it’s first to four,” Doncic said. “I’m going to believe until the end, so we just have to keep going. I really believe this team can do it, so we just have to keep believing.”
Maybe the cheesy Journey song “Don’t Stop Believin'” blared during a fourth-quarter timeout and it was stuck in Doncic’s head. Or maybe the lyrics just rolled off his tongue so easily because that’s how he felt.
But this is impossible, right?
