RealGM Analysis
In both cases, denial is likely. “I still don’t feel like they can beat us bro,” Anthony Edwards said, after his Wolves fell behind Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks, 0-3 in the Western Conference Finals. We’ve all talked like that, after having our id rearranged for us by someone who looks like they rolled out of a dormitory bunk bed and cracked open a Mountain Dew for breakfast. In the closing moments of Game 2, Doncic spoke to Rudy Gobert like he’d just done that, and then threw his headset on: “Motherf—er! You can’t f—ing guard me!” he hollered at the gigantic Frenchman, who just won his fourth Defensive Player of The Year trophy. Luka hit a game-winning shot in his face.
There are a few hundred people better than Luka at Overwatch, but there are zero who surpass him at pick-and-roll execution. In this case, a screen got him the optimal switch, and he cooked Gobert on an island to get a comfortable three-pointer, icing the game. Had the Wolves blitzed him, instead, he would’ve found the little hole between Gobert and Jaden McDaniels’ endless arms, hitting the roll man to activate a 4-on-3 scenario that he’s gotten his teammates very used to. Had McDaniels evaded the screen, and stayed on Doncic? Luka could use his girth to knock him back, and get something familiar and smooth out of that too. There are no good options here, if you’re Minnesota. And they’re throwing two of the best defenders alive at him, by the way.
In addition to his PnR mastery, there’s also no better lob thrower. These two facts do not necessarily make him the sport’s best passer—Nikola Jokic, whose distribution of the ball defies strategic convention, inspiring reconsiderations of the elemental table, still holds that honor—but Luka’s algorithmic precision has certainly transformed the athletes around him into their most dangerous selves. Over the course of the season, they’ve fine-tuned their leaping, running, and shooting to the timing of his disbursements, so that his unmatched ability to push the right button at the right time turns every defense into a game he’s played before.
As a playoff series progresses, this gets truer and truer, and that’s when he gets truly mean with the headset chatter. Looking to egg Doncic on, a Minnesota fan sitting courtside for the fifth and final game of the conference finals brought a handkerchief, as a way of reminding the superstar that, a lot of the time, he whines too much to referees, begging for more favorable calls. Luka saw this fan’s theatrics, presumably early on, and waited for the perfect moment to spoil them. After scoring a basket on McDaniels and getting fouled on it, early in the second half with Dallas already up 34 points, he stared viciously at the fan and asked “Who’s crying, motherf—er?”
There have been three edited words in this column, and if I quoted Doncic’s on-court mouth much more, this space would contain more dashes than letters. There was a time when media members spoke of the young man’s honor and sportsmanship (perhaps because of his pale skin?), but that moment has passed. Everyone knows him, now, for what he really is: an incredible bastard, shockingly lacking in manners as he arrives early. You can have your problems with that, but lack of excitement probably isn’t one of them.
Last year, it was Jokic who represented the Balkan part of Europe as he rolled through the playoffs, and now it’s Doncic. The two players are not just from neighboring countries and cultures, but also very similar on the court. They aren’t fast and don’t jump much at all, but control the game with size, skill, and feel. It’s the third category in which they’re most different, though. While Jokic exerts incredible influence over the patterns of the game with and without the ball, Doncic almost always does so with it. As a result, he has more control; it doesn’t hurt that he’s a much scarier perimeter shooter, too.
Doncic has little of the aspirational egalitarianism to his game that Jokic does. Sometimes, the Denver Nuggets’ three-time MVP can frustrate fans by not grabbing the competition and molding its outcome more aggressively, because he’s going for something more beautiful and genial than that, a true team-wide bonanza. Doncic has never inspired such a feeling in Mavericks followers. Win or lose, the minutes he’s on the court are his—and what he’s searching for isn’t a garden, but a weapon. He wants to use it every possession, so the controller stays in his hands. This time two weeks from now, it might be clear that there’s no better place for it to be.
