The worst Doncic of the season
NBA
Luka Doncic cannot carry these Mavericks anymore, and had his worst performance so far in the defeat against the Blazers.
“Luka is playing too many minutes” coach Jason Kidd admitted, hiding behind injuries to justify his call.
The Texas team had a very weak defense and suffered greatly to Damian Lillard (36 points) had a shocking 22/46 in triples, with Reggie Bullock 8/10 from the perimeter.
- REDACCION
Barcelona
It’s so obvious that Luka Doncic makes the Dallas Mavericks better as well as the Texas team makes the Slovenian ‘worse’. As exhausted as well guarded, after playing a total of 96 minutes in the last two games -including the two overtimes against the Lakers- the Slovenian said ‘enough’ in the grueling beating against the Blazers (136-119) to the extent of the worst game of the season.
With 15 points, 10 assists and 6 rebounds in 36 minutes, the point guard signed his lowest scoring record of the current season since March 2022, when he scored exactly the same numbers against Minnesota. The fatigue of the Slovenian was clear in the shooting range with just 7/17 field points, 0/5 triples and 1/6 in free shots. The number 77 had rested just 5 and 8 minutes in the last two games.
Anyone can have a bad day -even the geniuses-, but these Mavericks seem to push themselves to make that a constant situation for Doncic. Not a day goes by that the former Real Madrid point guard has to make extraordinary efforts to put his team ahead. And not even that is enough to guarantee a win for the team coached by Jason Kidd, since his triple double against the Lakers -35 points, 13 assists and 14 rebounds in 50 minutes- was key to victory over the purple and gold team (115-119 ) but not his 43 points, 11 assists and 11 rebounds in 43 minutes to topple the Clippers (113-101 loss). And the four times he didn’t deliver, the Mavericks lost.
So the logical thing happened against the Blazers, with the Slovenian having a very bad evening, both Doncic and the Mavericks missing Christian Wood, out due to injury. “Spencer, Timmy (Hardaway Jr.) and Luka are playing a lot of minutes, we’re gonna have to look at other players, but none of them played more than 40 minutes tonight” Kidd said, still not having a single moment of self-criticism when asked about the difficult series of games ahead for the Mavericks: Heat, Hawks and the Clippers.
“We won in Los Angeles and we’re 24-20 (fifth in the West Conference). We’ve had injured players throughout the whole season and the guys are being competitive on both sides of the court”, Kidd pointed out. Aside from Wood, the Mavericks are also missing Josh Green, Dorian Finney-Smith and Maxi Kleber.
Neither Spencer Dinwiddie's 25 points (8/12 on shots) nor Reggie Bullock's 24 who had a shocking 8/10 on three-pointers served Dallas to cover up their defensive miseries. It was so bad the Texas team could not win even with an impressive 22/46 in triples (almost 48%).
Damian Lillard, who had scored 50 points against the Cavaliers, led Portland with 36 points (11/20 and 4/11 from the perimeter) and 10 assists along with Jusuf Nurkic with a double-double -22 points and 11 rebounds-, and Anfernee Simons (21 points). They also added double figures Jerami Grant (16), the promising rookie Shaedon Sharpe (12), Josh Hart (11) and Gary Payton (10). The game was already finished at halftime (71-56).
The Mavericks have known for a long time that they’re taking a big risk of burning Doncic out. But the problem’s still there. They can’t get around it. It’s that or they suffer from self-complacency issues at a team level with what the Slovenian can create, but they don’t want it.
