The Mavericks ran a Luka Doncic tribute video during pregame introductions ahead of their game Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Lakers. It ran about 130 seconds, featured swelling music, and opened with a clip of Adam Silver gently over-pronouncing "Doncic" from the stage of the 2018 NBA Draft. The clip worked, not just for recalling the moment of Doncic's arrival in the NBA, but because it served as a poignant reminder that the Slovenian wonderteen was still basically a foreign curiosity to North American hoops observers (and, uh, the NBA commissioner) when Mavericks fans and Dallasites first made him their guy. He stayed their guy for more than six years, growing very literally into adulthood.
That's not nothing, man! My daughter has been in her current daycare class for less than two years, and we are pulling her out for this upcoming summer session. The school's administrator recently informed me that when we re-enroll her in the autumn she might have to go to a different class, with a different teacher, run in a different classroom, one that is separated from the old one by a single wall. I am heartbroken about this, pretty well devastated. I know that I will have to clean out my daughter's cubby very soon, and I am dreading it. I'm going to need an emotional support animal when I pick her up that afternoon. Very real connections form in a hell of a lot less time than Doncic lived and worked in Dallas. "I don't know how I did it," said a still wobbly-voiced Doncic, of participating in the basketball game, after it was over. "When I was watching that video, I was like, there's no way I'm playing this game."
The video covered the happy moments and major milestones of his time in Dallas, and skipped the part where the team's cornfed-Alfred E. Neuman-ass owner and grindset-evangelist general manager labeled Doncic a tubby loser and swapped him for a faded superstar famous in part for being even less reliable than Joel Embiid. The insult in that is not why Doncic was crying, but that he was crying made the insult all that much more hideous. It's right that Mavericks fans should have a big cathartic moment like that with their guy, and it was only ever going to happen inside that arena. But the franchise that made the Luka tribute video is the same one that recently had to scrap a hype video for being too haunted by the trauma of this organizational self-destruction, and then followed that up with an AI-generated mess where Doncic's crumbling replacement points a gun at his own head. It's funny, but also no one wants those bozos' fingers anywhere near this precious one-off moment, when Doncic and his fans got to say a real goodbye while the grief is still so big and beautiful. Also, not for nothing, but the two senior-most people in the organization hosting the memorial are the same grotesque freaks who authored the teardown, then justified it by blaming the victim.
Doncic did play the game, and was excellent. He put up 31 points on 16 shots in the first half, in front of a crowd that enjoyed his buckets at least as much as it did those of the guys wearing the white jerseys. This was far less a home crowd than it was a Doncic crowd. Dead balls and other assorted quiet moments on the court were soundtracked by extremely loud "Fire Nico" chants; Tim McMahon of ESPN reported that only "a small percentage" of attendees wore the free "Hvala za vse" T-shirts given away by the Mavericks, as if their provenance implied some kind of curse. To their credit, the crowd took up the home team's cause during the close parts of the second half, but what Mavericks fans most wanted from the night was a few hours of closeness with their exiled guy. Doncic did what Dallas fans have seen a lot of: He kicked ass, made his teammates better, posted eye-popping numbers, and won, on a court painted with a Mavericks logo.
As was the case when these teams met in Los Angeles back in February, the Mavericks generally looked better organized and more disciplined, but lacked that certain special something that makes a well-coached and well-meaning group of players into something better than a very respectable ho-hum. That's an all-too-common lack for an NBA team, and describes why parity isn't really a thing at basketball's highest level and why there is such a thing as tanking. It's easy to appreciate about these Mavericks that they get so much out of Naji Marshall and Max Christie and Daniel Gafford; it's enough to make a person daydream about how far they might go if they had, ah, hmm.
The home team made a charge in the second half, helped in part by a too-long sequence of absolutely brutal Lakers possessions, and took an improbable lead early in the fourth quarter. Their momentum soon stalled, though, when Lakers head coach JJ Redick put Doncic back into the game. The Lakers immediately ripped off a 9–0 run, and though the Mavericks briefly closed to within a possession, they couldn't muster up the stops or the efficient offense to mount a sustained comeback. This was for the best: The ballooning margin made it possible for Redick to empty his bench and grant Mavericks fans another moment to pour out some more love and gratitude for their guy. Doncic committed a scripted take foul with about 90 seconds left on the clock, Redick subbed in Bronny James, and the fans gave their guy a final standing ovation.
With the win, the Lakers became the third team in the brutal Western Conference to clinch a playoff berth; the Mavericks, meanwhile, remain at the bottom of the play-in, safe from elimination but a game back of the Sacramento Kings, grinding pretty pointlessly through the motions of the season's final weeks and condemned to a handful of extra contests when other teams of their general tier will be in vacation mode. Doncic finished the game with 45 points, becoming just the second player in NBA history to score 45 for a team and then in the same season score 45 against them. That is a meaningless statistic, but it's also tidy enough. The Mavericks dumped a genuinely great and locally beloved basketball player, along with what sure looked to everyone else like a very bright future. Whoever makes a decision like that can never be made to eat too much shit for it.
