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Down 3-0, Luka Doncic and the Mavericks find themselves in uncomfortable territory. In game three Luka Doncic displayed all of what makes him both great and at times, a major liability.
By Will Glover | June 13, 2024
Photo by Smiley N. Pool - The Dallas Morning News
Following another embarrassing loss for Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks, Brian Windhorst grilled the Mavericks star for his miserable behavior and performance in Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
Windhorst's rant had me thinking long and hard about the Mavericks' performance in the Finals; the Mavericks' struggles are not because of a lack of production from key role players. No. They are because of Luka Doncic, his inefficient clutch-time shooting, and his MISERABLE defensive effort (and cause the Mavs can't make a free throw).
Don't get me wrong. Luka Doncic is an amazing player - one of the best in the league; however, his defensive effort might be some of the worst I have ever witnessed on the court... and I had the displeasure of watching prime James Harden try to defend the Golden State Warriors over multiple seasons. Luka's defense is so abhorrent, that he has the three WORST "Blow-by Percentage Allowed on Drives in a Series" efforts in the last 10 seasons. Miserable.
What makes this stat worse is the fact that when you think about it, allowing your man to get past you two out of every three drives is ridiculous. When you do this against a team like Boston, you can pretty much count yourself out of winning a game in the series. Luka allowing drive after drive allows Boston to constantly switch onto him, drive, then kick out to reliable shooters like Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, or literally any other Celtic... hell... XAVIER TILLMAN HIT A THREE BECAUSE OF THIS. XAVIER. TILLMAN. A career 26% shooter felt comfortable enough to shoot a three in an NBA Finals game because Luka creates so much space for the Celtics. Unreal. I mean, I cannot count how many times I watched Derrick White and Company get wide-open three-pointers. It's no secret why the Celtics' True Shooting Percentage is sitting around 59% and have attempted over 125 three-pointers... in three games. All because Luka Doncic could not care less about giving an ounce of effort on the defensive end.
There are two potential reasons I have identified for his poor defensive performance: he is overweight/out-of-shape and/or he is just that bad of a defender. One can argue that because he is overweight he is a bad defender, but I have seen several overweight NBA players at least give a few damns about defense (see Nikola Jokic). I genuinely think that Luka believes that he is too good to give effort on the defensive end and he decides to delegate defensive duties to his teammates. Not the leader I want to play for. If Luka truly cares about his legacy in Dallas, he needs to start becoming the team player that his mentor Dirk Nowitzki was. He doesn't need to be the best player on the defensive end, but he needs to at least show his team that he is trying. It's hard to play well on offense when you are playing 4 on 5 on the other end of the court. I won't even get to Luka's ineffective ISO ball style of play... that's a story for another time.
One last thing regarding Luka's miserable Game 3. HOW ON EARTH, knowing you have 5 fouls (4 in the 4th), DO YOU ATTEMPT TO STEP IN FRONT OF A DRIVING JAYLEN BROWN (got blown by again lol)? I mean goodness... why would you put the fate of the game in the hands of the refs, especially if you believed that they were one-sided, which they weren't. In fact, I could argue that the Mavericks were getting more favorable calls. Anyways, what a bone-headed decision from Doncic to try to take a charge in that situation, you had just come back from down 20+, on a 20-2 run, and you piss away all the momentum because you tried to foul-bait on the other side of the ball... ironic.
So you put your team in a tough spot... good job. Now you are asking them to waste a timeout on an obvious blocking foul. Great work here, Luka! You have officially shafted your team in several ways: down their best player, down a timeout, lost momentum. I have truly never seen a worse 4th quarter performance in an NBA Finals game in my life... and I sat through Game 4 of the 2011 NBA Finals and watched the Greatest Player of All Time score 0 points on 0/1 shooting in 12 minutes. At least he played great defense in that series.
I think I have said my piece. Again, Luka is a special talent on offense, one of the greatest scorers I have ever seen. He just needs to figure it out on the other end. You can score 40 but if you are giving up 50, who cares? If Luka wants to ever make it back to the biggest stage, he and the Mavericks need to figure out these defensive woes together.