On Wednesday night, Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic helped lead his team to a pivotal Game 5 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder by a score of 104-92, and Doncic had his best performance of the playoffs.
Doncic finished with 31 points, 10 rebounds, 11 assists, and one huge block on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander while shooting 12-22 from the field and 5-11 from downtown.
This is the vintage Luka performance that the Mavs have been waiting for, and him refraining from arguing with the officials and just focusing on hooping helped lead him to this dominant performance.
While Doncic put on a show in Game 5, the same can’t be said for the rest of the playoffs. Doncic’s struggles were starting to get concerning, and some fans wondered if he’d ever be able to string together a big performance.
He was clearly being held back by his countless injuries, and the national media took their chance to prey upon Doncic’s struggles amid this heated series against the Thunder.
In an article by Howard Beck of The Ringer, he wrote that one anonymous veteran assistant coach said that Doncic’s teammates “take a sigh of relief” when he checks out of the game due to his ball-dominant playstyle.
Although he never called Beck out by name, Green praised Doncic’s ability to get his teammates involved in the first half of the game by saying that Doncic is “spoon-feeding” his teammates the ball. One of the smartest basketball minds in the NBA praising Doncic for his playmaking makes this report about Doncic not getting his teammates involved look even worse.
Later during that halftime show on TNT, Green came to Doncic’s defense once again.
Kenny Smith asked the crew if Doncic was “making those passes at the beginning of the season” when talking about the crazy skip passes and lobs Doncic threw in the first half, and Green immediately said that he had been.
This was an extremely casual take by Smith, especially since Doncic averaged 9.8 assists per game this season. Doncic has been one of the best, if not the best, passer in the NBA for multiple seasons now, and the fact that NBA Analysts aren’t aware of him being elite in this area for multiple seasons is comical.
Green diving into how dominant Doncic was during the first half of Game 5 was insightful, and him defending him even when it could have been easy to give into the national media’s false narrative was huge.
Doncic’s next chance to prove the doubters wrong is in Game 6 on Saturday night.
For all the latest on Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks for the rest of the 2024 NBA Playoffs and all offseason long, stay tuned.
