Luka Dončić has established himself as one of the great stars of the NBA. The Slovenian guard has been the season’s top scorer, came third in the voting for best player and has led his team to the NBA final, but he has come up against an almost unbeatable Celtics team. After the disastrous last season, in which the team was fined for letting itself win, this has been a great year for the Dallas Mavericks, who rebuilt the squad mid-season and since then took a leap in quality that has taken them one step of glory. Making it to the finals is an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often. The Slovenian has achieved it in his sixth season in the NBA.
After this Monday’s loss against the Celtics, Dončić hugged Kyrie Irving, the team’s other star. Last year it seemed that there was no chemistry between them, that they annoyed each other, that they didn’t know how to share the spotlight. This season they have become inseparable and that complicity, along with the reinforcements of the winter transfer window, has been key to boosting the Mavericks.
In the press conference after the match, Dončić was asked what they had said in that hug. “Only [que tenemos que] stay together,” he said. “Having Ky on our team is incredible. We said, we’re going to fight together next season, and we’re just going to believe.”
The hyper-competitive Western Conference has had five different champions in the last five seasons. Although the Lakers, the Phoenix Suns and the Golden State Warriors are a bit in the doldrums, the Mavericks will have on their way to a new finals not only last year’s NBA champions, the Denver Nuggets, but also the others teams that have grown the most this last year: the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Despite the final defeat, this has been their best year since the Boy Wonder arrived at the Dallas Mavericks from Real Madrid. Before the decisive match, he recognized that, due to their history (18 titles, including this Monday’s), the Celtics could be compared a little to Real Madrid in football and its European hegemony. Dallas, on the other hand, is a team that has only reached the NBA finals three times. They lost the first, in 2006, against the Miami Heat and took revenge against that same rival five years later, in 2011, with the legendary Dirk Nowitzki as a big star and the current Mavericks coach, Jason Kidd, as a featured player. The German has a street named after him in Dallas near the American Airlines Center, but at his legendary level, he only reached those two finals in 21 seasons with the Mavericks.
Dončić Street will have to wait. Along with the good results, the best news this year for Dallas has been the growth of center Dereck Lively II. Chosen in position number 12 of the draft Last year, the 20-year-old, 2.16 meter tall player has shown very quickly that he can be among the NBA’s elite. He has gained size, is improving his shot and can be a key piece for the Mavericks to aspire to the ring in the near future.
In the second half of the season, Daniel Gafford, 2.08 meters tall, from the Washington Wizards, and power forward PJ Washington, who arrived from the Charlotte Hornets, joined the team. At the beginning of the year, Derrick Jones Jr. also arrived from the Bulls. The Mavericks have, therefore, a renewed team built around Dončić and Irving and the continuity of the block will be crucial to compete again in a final against the best from the east.
“I am proud of all the boys who have stepped on the court, of all the coaches, of all the people behind it. Obviously, we didn’t win the finals, but we had an incredible season and I’m proud of each one of them,” said Dončić after the painful defeat. And although he said he wasn’t thinking about what lessons to learn from the Celtics, he ended up spilling some: “They’re a great team. They have been together for a long time and have had to go through everything, so we just have to look at them, see how they play, see their maturity, and they have great players. We can learn from that. We have to fight next season.”
Dončić has played somewhat injured for a good part of the finals. He has never wanted to use his physical problems as an excuse and has been self-critical of his failures. He has missed many shots from the free throw line, he was weak in defense in the first games and somewhat individualistic in the definition. The aggressive defense of Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday has made it difficult for him to shoot. “They are very physical. They have great defenses,” he admitted. He was the architect of the victory in the fourth game, but this Friday he only made two of nine three-pointers attempted and although he finished the game with 28 points, almost all of them were achieved in the final stretch of the game, seeking an impossible comeback. Despite his winning streak, no one knows when he will get the next opportunity to play in the finals.
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