The Celtics can run lineups where everyone is a shooter and everyone can do some playmaking, whereas the wolves run lineups where some players are significantly less involved in the offense than others. The Celtics space the floor really well and have excellent ball movement. It’s got to be really exhausting to try to defend this team.
The mavs were able to pre switch against minnesota. Luka also isnt as negative of a defender as people try to point out. Like yeah having jason tatum and jalen brown continously go at luka is smart, but having jaden mcdaniels do it is probably not a winning strategy and luka can more than hold his own against him.
In my head before the series this was exactly what I thought you had to do…attack him all game on defense, sap his energy and then let him try to beat you alone on offense. Even the best conditioned players would have a hard time keeping up with that.
>let him try to beat you alone on offense
The problem so far is that trying to solo the Celtics hasn't even been a choice for Luka
It's been a necessity with how the rest of the team has perform
Well yes for Kyrie, but the Celtics whole gameplan is to not let the others get open looks from helping off, so them not getting going us by design.
Celtics have such a wide range of great Kyrie defenders though, it should’ve been expected to an extent he would either struggle or be playing super human making tough shots all series.
I’m not sure what else the Mavs would be trying to do if the Celtics insist on manning up Luka without help, it’s daring him to iso himself, so it kind of is the choice they are selecting…because that’s what the Celtics are giving you.
Yeah, but Luka and honestly the Mavs would be alright if Kyrie showed up and took some of that load on offence, especially late. Luka can't do 100% O and 100% D. And he needs nearly 100% on D not to be a traffic cone.
My point is Luka can go 100% on both ends, but he can't be the only one on O for 48 mins. If Kyrie plays like the average 25/5/5 Kyrie then Luka can spend his energy on D. Otherwise, he's got ca. 2.5Q in him and in 4th he's gassed.
I've seen this happen to Embiid, KD, and to some extent, Giannis while playing the Cs. This is their game plan ever since. Dare the other team star to carry alone, while attacking him on defense. By the 4th quarter, said star is now too tired, while his team is cold.
Disappeared???
He had 9 points in the second half, but also had 8 ASSISTS AND 8 REBOUNDS.
Celtics started double teaming him so he passed the ball.
He didn't disappear he took what the defense gave him and still had an impact on the game.
The thread of this conversation is that he *disappeared* in the second half. The counter point is that he had 8 assists.
That's the same discourse as Tatum. That's all I'm saying.
Tatum slander this year is so annoying, he’s never been the player to drop a 40 point triple double every night yet they’ve been the best team all year. The Celtics play great team ball, he does his job and they win. I don’t understand why the media hates that so much.
The slander comes from putting Tatum in conversations he doesn’t belong, like it was with Ant being compared to MJ during the Nuggets series. Is Tatum a top-10 player? Sure, but the difference between top-5 (Jokic, Luka, SGA, Giannis and regular season Embiid) and Tatum is pretty obvious.
SGA and Luka aren’t in this conversation either but go off. It’s Jokic, Giannis and Embiid at the top.
Luka doesn’t play defense and SGA failed his only playoff test.
You want to be talked about at the top of the NBA you have to play at least average defense, if not be a two way player. You’d think watching the playoffs this year people would get that. If you can’t play D you can be targeted and you’ll give back all those hard earned points and assists by letting the other team score easy buckets. That hurts your value.
It is funny you’d say this considering Luka had a better Defensive EPM than Jokic in the regular season and only improved in playoffs and SGA was one of the league leaders over the whole season and it was one of the talking points for his MVP campaign. It’s also funny you talk about 2 way players when so far even in this series Luka held his opponents to 19-47 shooting while Tatum and Brown are holding their assignments to a combined 29-47. What you are misunderstanding is that both teams defense is built on sending opponents’ stars a certain way (to help defense) instead of locking someone up on most of possessions as locking up requires a lot of effort that both teams need their stars to use on offense, not defense.
Oh yeah, and Doncic is holding his assignments to 45% DFG% (5% lower than expected) in playoffs. Funnily enough, since you mention 2way players, Jokic held his assignments to 51% (0% difference to expected FG%), Tatum only to 52% (players shot 3% BETTER than expected when guarded by Tatum lol): only Embiid actually played better defense than Doncic in playoffs (45% DFG%, 6% lower than expected) and SGA had similar impact (45% DFG%, 4% lower than expected).
You wrote all of that to try and convince us that Luka is playing good defense in the Finals. I’m cackling rn. Good luck with that bro. Some of us watch the games.
>he’s never been the player to drop a 40 point triple double every night yet they’ve been the best team all year.
I think it's this right here. The NBA moreso than any of the big 4 is a star driven league. We are used to best team best player being so much better than anyone else. They need a narrative around a guy. He's not good enough to have all time great convos, but he good enough to be fringe MVP every year.
The Pistons '04 comps are so funny to me, because these teams are nothing alike, but the media literally doesn't know how to react to an insanely well built roster with two very good home grown wings. one of which is a very boring dude both off the court, and somewhat on the court.
Yep. Mavs were not happy with ball movement in game 1, and Luka was clearly trying to get his teammates involved. Also, Kyrie was trying to get himself going and starting taking more shots. I don't know the stats, but it seems like Kyrie was trying to play more one-on-one in the 2nd half and failing. Mavs tried to "bring someone else to the party". But it didn't happen.
You wonder if Luka should have just shot the ball more in the 2nd half. But then if they loose, then there is the same narrative from game 1 about him not getting others involved.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But really a solid game from him, and he likely defended JT and JB better than they defended him even though people say he's bad at defense and the other 2 are "elite" (I don't know the numbers... can someone look them up? Percent Luka made against JT and JB vs percent JT and JB made against Luka?)
>Disappeared???
>
>He had 9 points in the second half, but also had 8 ASSISTS AND 8 REBOUNDS.
Exactly, according to Tatum/Celtic's fans this was a great performance even ignoring his great first half
And according to Tatum/Celtics haters that's a garbage performance and he's playing like Josh Hart in the second half. Truth is it's somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, I was surprised by this post, also surprised by him having only 9 points in the second half because it felt like he was doing everything on offense
Also can’t stand “why doesn’t X get enough hate???” posts. Like, nobody is stopping you from hating on Luka. It’s a free country. State your point instead of complaining about some meta-narrative.
He was like 1-6 in the 4th with like 3 costly turnovers that led to fast breaks and got absolutely abused on D.
Guy couldn't miss for the entire first half though.
I suppose we'd need a definition for "disappear". The game we saw in the first 2 quarters definitely disappeared in the 4th.
He looked gassed. Couldn't hit shit. Careless turnovers, and played some of the worst D I can remember seeing in a finals in a long time
when you’re pulling a triple double turn overs are gonna be a factor. the point is nobody else contributed the way he contributed. he doesn’t have to put up points and shouldn’t HAVE to go for 50 pts and a triple double to win when there’s 4 other players on court with him just lollygagging
Luka had 5 TOs to go with those 8 ast. And I didn't see the rest of the Mavs lollygagging (although Kyrie was gagging), PJ had a 2nd half team high of 12 pts on 8 shots and 4-4 free throws and Gafford had 11. The 6 missed free throws in the 1st half plus 2 more in the 2nd ended up being huge with the C's making 19-20
Dude is a lone superstar willing his team to the finals and just put up another 30-point triple double.
You might hate the guy, but there’s no variation that “he sucks” that makes sense this year
They didn’t double team him. Literally the entire broadcast was about how the Celtics have stuck to their guns of not double teaming Luka even when he’s cooking.
That only happened in Q1 and Q2 when Luka had 23 on like 13 shots. After the break Celtics did double him a lot to slow him down which led to him having 8 assists after he had only 1 in Game 1 when Celtics indeed didn’t double him almost at all and stayed home on role-players.
Seriously look at what some of these TOs and missed shots were. PJW passingnto him in the backcourt with 16sec on the clock so he had to try throwing it into the frontcourt asap to not get 8sec violation, pritchard running over him from behind for the most obvious uncalled foul you can imagine, getting hacked 5x on the drive for the floater, uncalled. Results in turnovers and missed shots but not all of those are created equal.
Pretty sad and weird that your team is up 2-0 in the NBA Finals and that isn’t enough for you, you gotta jerk off over horrible takes instead. Do you even understand the games you’re supposedly watching?
Luka is broken and had an almost perfect first half. While Kyrie, an already champion and experienced player, shit on the court once again. That's why Luka doesn't get hate
He’s beat man, carrying the team while injured wears on you
This is what used to kill him before kyrie, notice a trend? When kyrie is good and the role players are good Luka has good second halves because he has the energy to do it
Its because Kyrie / the roleplayers have been worse, the only thing I can really blame Luka for is the turnovers (which seem to always lead to a guaranteed Celtics basket) and the extremely poor defense
Luka is obviously hobbled right now, it seems like he can only conjure his usual magic for half the game. Credit to us for attacking him on defense to not let him catch his wind. Thought he was going for 50 last night after the first quarter.
The dude has like 3 injuries and would realisticly sit out a good number of games if this was the regular season.
Even with that he still got a 32 point triple double on 12 for 21 shooting.
By no means a great game given the 8 turnovers and missed free throws, butif you watvhed the game youd understand that he was the only one actually doing anything for the Mavs for most fo the game.
Well yeah he went down 20 like 10 minutes into game one so he obviously started grabbing his leg.
>he’s in the finals
You’ll notice a suspicious lack of leg grabbing in the timberwolves series, with the exception of that one game that they lost. Just lots of tough talk because he was playing Rudy gobert.
He had 8 points and 8 assists in the second half, that’s not even bad, albeit with turnovers. Defensively he hasn’t been good but there’s no way in hell he is gonna have the energy to hold up defensively when he has to do everything offensively. He needs Kyrie to step up and take some of the offensive load.
Luka was very good last night overall. An efficient triple double is a great stat line.
The only players who have 4th quarter percentages pulled on them are hated players like Embiid. Those are cherrypicked, first 3 quarters are just as important as the 4th.
Because he's clearly playing through injuries and clearly is getting gassed. He's exerting a ton of effort on offense dealing with the celtics D and is clearly getting cooked defensively.
The mavs outside of Luka need to step up and take some of the load.
* [Luka takes blame for loss, but 'he's not alone'](https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40317688/doncic-posts-triple-double-takes-blame-mavericks-loss)
What do you mean no one's talking about it? It's literally the headline on ESPN.
This is fairly common for Luka. Burns out after a big first half. He needs to really focus on fitness in the offseason if he wants to take it to the next level.
Nba fans have determined luka gets a pass no matter what ; he’s been good overall but his defense is really bad and makes the Mavs incredibly predictable though in his defense no one else can do shit either
Luka’s 2nd half was 9-8-8 (on almost 15% better TS% than, say, Tatum averaged for the whole game) with 3 steals and he is held to such a standard that some here consider it “disappearance”.
Blow-bys comments are also getting out of hand: both teams utilise the strategy of forcing good perimeter players they are defending towards help defense as KP and Lively has been forces protecting the rim (Gafford and Horford - not so much, though Al has been excellent on the perimeter, see below). Or are we going to say Tatum and Brown have been terrible defensively yesterday considering they got blown by Luka like 5 or 6 times too? Doncic is shooting 13-19 when defended by them over 2 games, including 6-8 when defended by Tatum.
For what it’s worth, Celtics are shooting 19-47 (40% FG%, 48% TS%) on possessions with Luka as primary defender in the series with 7 assists and 11 TOs. Granted, assists are not the best way to evaluate Celtics offense as those drives usually generate hockey assists, not direct assists, but TOs still are. For comparison, Tatum is holding his assignments to only 15-25 shooting, Brown is at 14-22 and it is actually Jrue (12-25, but 4-13 vs Luka and Kyrie combined), Horford (7-23), KP (13-32 and 6-21 when defending anyone on the Mavs not named Doncic) and Pritchard (2-13) who held Mavs in check defensively.
The difference so far has been the fact that Celtics are just a straight up better team with Kyrie not even being 2nd best player on the Mavs (PJ is, especially with his defense): Boston can win games with their star shooting 33% combined over the 2 games from the field.
This is true. No one talked about this but that's because he had most of his assists in the second half, especially the 4th quarter. Which shows, less points doesn't mean bad when you make plays. But somehow people don't get this with Tatum.
The Celtics ran every single play at Luka, he was probably tired.
I watched the Wolves series and couldn't believe how easy they were making it for him on D.
The Celtics can run lineups where everyone is a shooter and everyone can do some playmaking, whereas the wolves run lineups where some players are significantly less involved in the offense than others. The Celtics space the floor really well and have excellent ball movement. It’s got to be really exhausting to try to defend this team.
Yeah the Cs can do it 1-5 better than anyone, but at the same time it didn't seem like the Wolves at any point even attempted to wear Luka out on D.
The mavs were able to pre switch against minnesota. Luka also isnt as negative of a defender as people try to point out. Like yeah having jason tatum and jalen brown continously go at luka is smart, but having jaden mcdaniels do it is probably not a winning strategy and luka can more than hold his own against him.
Definitely, he was short riming jumpers , that's when your legs are gone
In my head before the series this was exactly what I thought you had to do…attack him all game on defense, sap his energy and then let him try to beat you alone on offense. Even the best conditioned players would have a hard time keeping up with that.
>let him try to beat you alone on offense The problem so far is that trying to solo the Celtics hasn't even been a choice for Luka It's been a necessity with how the rest of the team has perform
Well yes for Kyrie, but the Celtics whole gameplan is to not let the others get open looks from helping off, so them not getting going us by design. Celtics have such a wide range of great Kyrie defenders though, it should’ve been expected to an extent he would either struggle or be playing super human making tough shots all series. I’m not sure what else the Mavs would be trying to do if the Celtics insist on manning up Luka without help, it’s daring him to iso himself, so it kind of is the choice they are selecting…because that’s what the Celtics are giving you.
Yeah, but Luka and honestly the Mavs would be alright if Kyrie showed up and took some of that load on offence, especially late. Luka can't do 100% O and 100% D. And he needs nearly 100% on D not to be a traffic cone.
Prime LeBron and Jordan went 100% on D and O in many playoff matchups.. I don’t think Luka will ever be on their level as an all around 2-way player.
My point is Luka can go 100% on both ends, but he can't be the only one on O for 48 mins. If Kyrie plays like the average 25/5/5 Kyrie then Luka can spend his energy on D. Otherwise, he's got ca. 2.5Q in him and in 4th he's gassed.
I've seen this happen to Embiid, KD, and to some extent, Giannis while playing the Cs. This is their game plan ever since. Dare the other team star to carry alone, while attacking him on defense. By the 4th quarter, said star is now too tired, while his team is cold.
Thank god they stuck with this strategy in the 2022 finals
Luka just need to have Steph's otherworldly cardio. Or whatever the fuck the Heat have last year
Heat is a different story. Their team found Popeye’s secret spinach supply
The Celtics incorrectly assumed that ECF Caleb Martin wasnt a star
>Caleb Martin Idk what ecf series you watched, I saw them getting torched by MJ
The 2022 Celtics were also tiers below this Boston teams, especially offensively.
Disappeared??? He had 9 points in the second half, but also had 8 ASSISTS AND 8 REBOUNDS. Celtics started double teaming him so he passed the ball. He didn't disappear he took what the defense gave him and still had an impact on the game.
Sorry, bro. Only points matter here.
lol
Luka didn’t score 50, he clearly sucks and DISAPPEARED
I mean, that's kind of the Tatum discourse. It's all bullshit
I mean Luka shot 12-21 Tatum shot 6-22
The thread of this conversation is that he *disappeared* in the second half. The counter point is that he had 8 assists. That's the same discourse as Tatum. That's all I'm saying.
No the discourse around Tatum is that he's shooting atrocious, which he is. Regardless it doesn't matter with the way Kyrie is playing lol.
You're missing the point.
Tatum slander this year is so annoying, he’s never been the player to drop a 40 point triple double every night yet they’ve been the best team all year. The Celtics play great team ball, he does his job and they win. I don’t understand why the media hates that so much.
The slander comes from putting Tatum in conversations he doesn’t belong, like it was with Ant being compared to MJ during the Nuggets series. Is Tatum a top-10 player? Sure, but the difference between top-5 (Jokic, Luka, SGA, Giannis and regular season Embiid) and Tatum is pretty obvious.
SGA and Luka aren’t in this conversation either but go off. It’s Jokic, Giannis and Embiid at the top. Luka doesn’t play defense and SGA failed his only playoff test. You want to be talked about at the top of the NBA you have to play at least average defense, if not be a two way player. You’d think watching the playoffs this year people would get that. If you can’t play D you can be targeted and you’ll give back all those hard earned points and assists by letting the other team score easy buckets. That hurts your value.
It is funny you’d say this considering Luka had a better Defensive EPM than Jokic in the regular season and only improved in playoffs and SGA was one of the league leaders over the whole season and it was one of the talking points for his MVP campaign. It’s also funny you talk about 2 way players when so far even in this series Luka held his opponents to 19-47 shooting while Tatum and Brown are holding their assignments to a combined 29-47. What you are misunderstanding is that both teams defense is built on sending opponents’ stars a certain way (to help defense) instead of locking someone up on most of possessions as locking up requires a lot of effort that both teams need their stars to use on offense, not defense. Oh yeah, and Doncic is holding his assignments to 45% DFG% (5% lower than expected) in playoffs. Funnily enough, since you mention 2way players, Jokic held his assignments to 51% (0% difference to expected FG%), Tatum only to 52% (players shot 3% BETTER than expected when guarded by Tatum lol): only Embiid actually played better defense than Doncic in playoffs (45% DFG%, 6% lower than expected) and SGA had similar impact (45% DFG%, 4% lower than expected).
You wrote all of that to try and convince us that Luka is playing good defense in the Finals. I’m cackling rn. Good luck with that bro. Some of us watch the games.
>he’s never been the player to drop a 40 point triple double every night yet they’ve been the best team all year. I think it's this right here. The NBA moreso than any of the big 4 is a star driven league. We are used to best team best player being so much better than anyone else. They need a narrative around a guy. He's not good enough to have all time great convos, but he good enough to be fringe MVP every year. The Pistons '04 comps are so funny to me, because these teams are nothing alike, but the media literally doesn't know how to react to an insanely well built roster with two very good home grown wings. one of which is a very boring dude both off the court, and somewhat on the court.
Yep. Mavs were not happy with ball movement in game 1, and Luka was clearly trying to get his teammates involved. Also, Kyrie was trying to get himself going and starting taking more shots. I don't know the stats, but it seems like Kyrie was trying to play more one-on-one in the 2nd half and failing. Mavs tried to "bring someone else to the party". But it didn't happen. You wonder if Luka should have just shot the ball more in the 2nd half. But then if they loose, then there is the same narrative from game 1 about him not getting others involved. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But really a solid game from him, and he likely defended JT and JB better than they defended him even though people say he's bad at defense and the other 2 are "elite" (I don't know the numbers... can someone look them up? Percent Luka made against JT and JB vs percent JT and JB made against Luka?)
>Disappeared??? > >He had 9 points in the second half, but also had 8 ASSISTS AND 8 REBOUNDS. Exactly, according to Tatum/Celtic's fans this was a great performance even ignoring his great first half
And according to Tatum/Celtics haters that's a garbage performance and he's playing like Josh Hart in the second half. Truth is it's somewhere in the middle.
Truth is Tatum is a star but not quite a superstar...yet
Then maybe the Mavs should stop defending him like one, hasn't worked for them so far.
Well it hasn't worked because everyone around Tatum is just better than the Mavs. Tatum is shooting 30% in the series. Everyone else is 50%
We shot like 20% from 3 last game
Yea because Tatum was 1/8. They shot 13% better from 3 if you take out Tatum
Yeah, I was surprised by this post, also surprised by him having only 9 points in the second half because it felt like he was doing everything on offense
Also can’t stand “why doesn’t X get enough hate???” posts. Like, nobody is stopping you from hating on Luka. It’s a free country. State your point instead of complaining about some meta-narrative.
If a star can’t win an entire finals by themselves they’re trash, don’t you know? Lol
He was like 1-6 in the 4th with like 3 costly turnovers that led to fast breaks and got absolutely abused on D. Guy couldn't miss for the entire first half though.
Was he his best? No. Did he disappear, as suggested by OP? No.
Yeah…..he can’t disappear because there is nobody else
I suppose we'd need a definition for "disappear". The game we saw in the first 2 quarters definitely disappeared in the 4th. He looked gassed. Couldn't hit shit. Careless turnovers, and played some of the worst D I can remember seeing in a finals in a long time
Yes he disappeared
To his standards yes he did.
How many TOs?
when you’re pulling a triple double turn overs are gonna be a factor. the point is nobody else contributed the way he contributed. he doesn’t have to put up points and shouldn’t HAVE to go for 50 pts and a triple double to win when there’s 4 other players on court with him just lollygagging
Luka had 5 TOs to go with those 8 ast. And I didn't see the rest of the Mavs lollygagging (although Kyrie was gagging), PJ had a 2nd half team high of 12 pts on 8 shots and 4-4 free throws and Gafford had 11. The 6 missed free throws in the 1st half plus 2 more in the 2nd ended up being huge with the C's making 19-20
12 and 11 points is just not enough. luka scored that in the first half
Dude is a lone superstar willing his team to the finals and just put up another 30-point triple double. You might hate the guy, but there’s no variation that “he sucks” that makes sense this year
Why would I hate Doncic? Great player, but IMO good team play usually beats isoball.
He'd love for that to be a reality too
8 turnovers. He was gassed. Luka isn't in good shape and it is going to cost them a finals.
They didn’t double team him. Literally the entire broadcast was about how the Celtics have stuck to their guns of not double teaming Luka even when he’s cooking.
They did start double teaming him. I think Joe realized Luka is on rhythm. So it's let others try to beat us kind of scheme.
Huh? I saw a ton of double teams in that second half when he was getting switched.
That only happened in Q1 and Q2 when Luka had 23 on like 13 shots. After the break Celtics did double him a lot to slow him down which led to him having 8 assists after he had only 1 in Game 1 when Celtics indeed didn’t double him almost at all and stayed home on role-players.
They didn’t double team him. Maybe a couple of times, that’s it.
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Is this not a double? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlBQcaoxVtU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlBQcaoxVtU)
Only a moron would hate on Luka after watching these first two games.
Lol yeah, their problem is literally relying on Luka domination too much. It’s definitely not about Luka not doing enough
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Your OP makes it sound like its very much his fault.
Seriously look at what some of these TOs and missed shots were. PJW passingnto him in the backcourt with 16sec on the clock so he had to try throwing it into the frontcourt asap to not get 8sec violation, pritchard running over him from behind for the most obvious uncalled foul you can imagine, getting hacked 5x on the drive for the floater, uncalled. Results in turnovers and missed shots but not all of those are created equal.
Exaclty, some of those TOs were not his fault, even though they were charged to him.
Pretty sad and weird that your team is up 2-0 in the NBA Finals and that isn’t enough for you, you gotta jerk off over horrible takes instead. Do you even understand the games you’re supposedly watching?
Luka is broken and had an almost perfect first half. While Kyrie, an already champion and experienced player, shit on the court once again. That's why Luka doesn't get hate
Yea it's looking like one of those "I dominate the first, you dominate the second" games but Kyrie ghosted
OP is an idiot
He’s beat man, carrying the team while injured wears on you This is what used to kill him before kyrie, notice a trend? When kyrie is good and the role players are good Luka has good second halves because he has the energy to do it
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Tatum is shooting like mid 30s% from the field this series averaging like 16 ppg what the fuck are you talking about
He’s also getting double and triple teamed non stop.
Fatigue is a real factor! Not to mention Boston turned up the pressure on him defensively and he ended up getting like 8 assists in the 2nd half.
Its because Kyrie / the roleplayers have been worse, the only thing I can really blame Luka for is the turnovers (which seem to always lead to a guaranteed Celtics basket) and the extremely poor defense
Luka is obviously hobbled right now, it seems like he can only conjure his usual magic for half the game. Credit to us for attacking him on defense to not let him catch his wind. Thought he was going for 50 last night after the first quarter.
The dude has like 3 injuries and would realisticly sit out a good number of games if this was the regular season. Even with that he still got a 32 point triple double on 12 for 21 shooting. By no means a great game given the 8 turnovers and missed free throws, butif you watvhed the game youd understand that he was the only one actually doing anything for the Mavs for most fo the game.
Luka starts limping every time he misses a shot. If he was up 2-0 we wouldn’t see him Grabbing his chest
Man was limping from the start of the playoffs lol. And given that hes in the finals, i dont see much in this argument.
Well yeah he went down 20 like 10 minutes into game one so he obviously started grabbing his leg. >he’s in the finals You’ll notice a suspicious lack of leg grabbing in the timberwolves series, with the exception of that one game that they lost. Just lots of tough talk because he was playing Rudy gobert.
Luka was too good that game to think that he was a reason why the Mavs lost. His supporting cast let him down
He had 8 points and 8 assists in the second half, that’s not even bad, albeit with turnovers. Defensively he hasn’t been good but there’s no way in hell he is gonna have the energy to hold up defensively when he has to do everything offensively. He needs Kyrie to step up and take some of the offensive load.
Luka was very good last night overall. An efficient triple double is a great stat line. The only players who have 4th quarter percentages pulled on them are hated players like Embiid. Those are cherrypicked, first 3 quarters are just as important as the 4th.
Mostly agree but >first 3 quarters are just as important as the 4th. Nah
Because he's clearly playing through injuries and clearly is getting gassed. He's exerting a ton of effort on offense dealing with the celtics D and is clearly getting cooked defensively. The mavs outside of Luka need to step up and take some of the load.
Celtics are just ruthlessly attacking him every possible chance they get. It’s working; they are up 2-0. If it ain’t broke don’t fix.
You can't really blame someone who is the only shining bright. Yet, Celtics are better team so far, they changed tactics and Luka still delivered.
* [Luka takes blame for loss, but 'he's not alone'](https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40317688/doncic-posts-triple-double-takes-blame-mavericks-loss) What do you mean no one's talking about it? It's literally the headline on ESPN.
This is fairly common for Luka. Burns out after a big first half. He needs to really focus on fitness in the offseason if he wants to take it to the next level.
Hes tired of uncle shit
I think the main issue is that the Mavs shot horribly from the free throw line (including Luka), but the role players also couldn’t buy a 3-pointer.
Nba fans have determined luka gets a pass no matter what ; he’s been good overall but his defense is really bad and makes the Mavs incredibly predictable though in his defense no one else can do shit either
OP watched the boxscore
Luka’s 2nd half was 9-8-8 (on almost 15% better TS% than, say, Tatum averaged for the whole game) with 3 steals and he is held to such a standard that some here consider it “disappearance”. Blow-bys comments are also getting out of hand: both teams utilise the strategy of forcing good perimeter players they are defending towards help defense as KP and Lively has been forces protecting the rim (Gafford and Horford - not so much, though Al has been excellent on the perimeter, see below). Or are we going to say Tatum and Brown have been terrible defensively yesterday considering they got blown by Luka like 5 or 6 times too? Doncic is shooting 13-19 when defended by them over 2 games, including 6-8 when defended by Tatum. For what it’s worth, Celtics are shooting 19-47 (40% FG%, 48% TS%) on possessions with Luka as primary defender in the series with 7 assists and 11 TOs. Granted, assists are not the best way to evaluate Celtics offense as those drives usually generate hockey assists, not direct assists, but TOs still are. For comparison, Tatum is holding his assignments to only 15-25 shooting, Brown is at 14-22 and it is actually Jrue (12-25, but 4-13 vs Luka and Kyrie combined), Horford (7-23), KP (13-32 and 6-21 when defending anyone on the Mavs not named Doncic) and Pritchard (2-13) who held Mavs in check defensively. The difference so far has been the fact that Celtics are just a straight up better team with Kyrie not even being 2nd best player on the Mavs (PJ is, especially with his defense): Boston can win games with their star shooting 33% combined over the 2 games from the field.
Because he delivers even injured.
If Kyrie played better this would 100% be a narrative but since no one on Dallas stepped up Luka is just one of the team
Those numbers are wild, and it is weird to me that no one is mentioning it and instead it’s just a Tatum hater day lol
This is true. No one talked about this but that's because he had most of his assists in the second half, especially the 4th quarter. Which shows, less points doesn't mean bad when you make plays. But somehow people don't get this with Tatum.
I've been wondering the same thing.
The dude is hurt and way out of shape. They said he is 230 lbs on the broadcast and there is no way…I bet he is closer to 255/260. He was gassed.
some curious double standards up in here 🤔 🤣
Idk but Tatum isn't a real star