Good Morning It’s Basketball - What is fair to ask of Luka?
This is a preview of today’s full, robust newsletter. Want the whole thing, plus every full newsletter five times a week? This glorious prize is within your grasp for just $5 per month or $50 per year! What is fair to ask of Luka?His Game 4 defensive effort was completely divorced from what we'd seen previously. Is it right to expect he repeats it?Good morning. Sorry about the lack of a Friday newsletter — exhaustion caught up. Better now. Let’s basketball. The Evening Air; Henri-Edmond Cross; 1893 The Dallas Mavericks beat the holy hell out of the Boston Celtics in Game 4 on Friday night for a few reasons:
Games like this in the modern NBA slip away quickly for the trailing team, and there’s a window usually in the third quarter to make it a reasonable game and go for the flashy comeback, or hit some bad beats and give it away. It was clear through the entire third that the Celtics had nothing in this one; Joe Mazzulla rightly threw the towel early. My question is about Luka Doncic’s defense. It was impactful in a way that we had seen only in brief moments all season and all postseason. It was the opposite of what we saw through the first three games of this series, where Boston relentlessly targeted and blew by Doncic. Tom Haberstroh has the data and a theory: that criticism of Doncic’s play after Game 3 — particularly the viral segment by Brian Windhorst — sparked Luka’s response. Tom mentioned Luka’s interview with Malika Andrews from NBA Today that aired Thursday as an indication that Doncic knew he was sitting in a bad spot — I just want to reiterate that it’s absolutely wild that the Mavericks and Luka’s management agreed to this interview the day after Dallas went down 3-0 with Doncic fouling out with four minutes remaining after getting destroyed by the Celtics’ scorers all night. I’m impressed with whoever on the Mavericks/Luka team that agreed to this, whether it had been pre-planned with ESPN’s NBA crew in Dallas for a couple days or not. I’m impressed that Luka took full responsibility for the way the series had turned. I’m impressed most of all that he backed up his comments 36 hours later in Game 4. My question now that we’ve again seen indications that Luka can defend well and can stay out of a blood feud with the referees when he needs to … is it fair to expect him to do that more frequently? Should the minimum level of expectation be that he’s not a total sieve?... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to Good Morning It's Basketball to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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Tuesday, June 11, 2024
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The Mavericks' best player is killing. The Celtics' best player is flailing. Boston is up 2-0. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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JJ Redick is apparently no longer the front-runner as Dan Hurley enters the chat. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Redemption, erasure, complexity in human relations and Kyrie Irving
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Normal people keep the world going, but controversial people give us a lot to talk about. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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