Ridiculous Luka Doncic Criticisms Completely Miss the Point

The Dallas Mavericks are down 3-0 in the NBA Finals after losing Game 3 at home to the Boston Celtics on Wednesday night. This is certainly a disappointing place to be for Mavericks fans who expected more from their team after their dominant run in the Western Conference playoffs.

Perhaps more disappointing, however, have been the ridiculous takes from the talking heads in the media. Since the loss, the overarching narrative is Luka Doncic, his defensive deficiencies, fouling, and incessant complaining to the referees.

While all of that was a problem in Game 3, blaming these Finals on Doncic is ridiculous. Luka is the last reason why Dallas is down 3-0 in the series.

The Idiotic Luka Doncic Takes Need to Stop

American sports media may not know this but there are other ways a team can lose other than their star player sucking. The seemingly only thing analysts know is to blame the best player on the losing team.

In fact, Luka Doncic has been the best player in this series and it is not particularly close.

Does Doncic get attacked defensively? Yes. Was his defensive effort level subpar? Yes. Is his complaining to the referees annoying? Yes.

While all of this may be true, it's also a fact that in the 38 minutes Doncic was on the floor last night, the Mavs outscored the Celtics by 9. In the 10 minutes that he sat down, they were outscored by 16.

Plus, despite Doncic's defensive struggles, Dallas isn't losing this series on that end of the floor. In fact, they have kept the Celtics, who had a 123.2 offensive rating during the regular season, to 116 offensive rating.

They are losing this on the offensive end. They haven't cracked 100 points in any of the games in the series. Kyrie Irving has largely been ineffective other than Game 3, and the Mavericks not named Luka Doncic have shot 43% from the field and 26% from three in the first three games. They are not getting anything from their role players, while Doncic is averaging 29.7 points and 6 assists on 47.3% shooting on almost entirely self-generated looks.

All of this is because of Boston's excellent defense. The Celtics have done an incredible job defending the deadly Luka Doncic pick-and-rolls. They haven't given up any alley-oops to Daniel Gafford or Dereck Lively and have also managed to take away the catch-and-shoot threes.

Why is it so hard to praise the Celtics and their dominant performance? Boston has easily been the better team and they are deservedly up 3-0. They are deeper and more talented and deploy five elite defenders in their starting lineup.

That is the reason they are winning. Not because of Luka Doncic.

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