In a league full of established veterans with postseason experience like LeBron James and Damian Lillard, the NBA playoffs are being taken by storm by Luka Doncic.
The young Doncic was 15 years old the last time somebody other than LeBron James or Steph Curry won an NBA championship, back in 2014 when the San Antonio Spurs dismantled the Miami Heat mini-dynasty once and for all. Now, he’s looking to become the next great player in the history of the NBA playoffs.
Luka Doncic has gone from a nice story for the Dallas Mavericks to somebody who could forever alter the trajectory of the LA Clippers franchise
The LA Clippers have been fodder for Doncic’s rise. In last season’s NBA bubble playoffs, the Clippers had the misfortune of getting his Dallas Mavericks in the first round. While the Clippers ultimately came out of the series with a hard-fought win in six games, the Mavs overachieved so drastically that it started the murmurs in the LA front office that ultimately led to head coach Doc Rivers getting fired.
Doncic’s playoff series debut was spectacular. He averaged 31.0 points, 9.8 rebounds and 8.7 assists per game in those six outings, shooting 50.0 percent from the floor and 36.4 from 3-point range.
The Clippers struggled to find answers for the young superstar, who just a few months before had celebrated his first legal drink in the United States.
Those same Clippers, with a new head coach in Ty Lue and the knowledge that underestimating Doncic and his Mavs could be fatal, have had even fewer answers for him in their matchup this season. The Mavs are up 2-0 after they went into Staples Center and stole the first two games on the Clippers’ home court, and they have their opponents against the wall by the throat.
Kawhi Leonard hasn’t been able to slow Doncic down. Neither has Paul George. Double teams aren’t doing the trick, and the Clippers have enough defensive weak links that he’s been able to pick them apart from the perimeter or on the drive.
The Clippers are almost out of time and the playoffs are just a couple of days old.
In the first two games, Luka is averaging 35.0 points, 9.0 assists and 8.5 rebounds per outing. He’s 10-of-14 from 3-point range and 27-of-53 from the floor. Mind you, he’s shooting dreadfully from the free throw line, hitting just 42.9 percent, but something suggests that if the Clippers opt to try hacking him in Game 3 or 4 and sending him to the charity stripe over and over, it won’t work out well for them.
So aside from the adjustments the Clippers will need to make to stop Luka Doncic, let’s talk about the burgeoning special relationship that’s developing between them.
Luka Doncic is developing a special relationship with the LA Clippers, like LeBron James with the 2007 Detroit Pistons
There comes a time for some ill-fated teams when a young player transitions from somebody you really enjoy watching play basketball, to somebody you realize is going to be a real problem. A player like this can swiftly go from being a nice story to the reason your franchise may never win a championship for the entirety of their career, simply because they exist.
The LA Clippers are in danger of being in that category. After wilting under the pressure of maintaining a 3-1 lead against the Denver Nuggets in the playoffs last season, these Clippers that were built to contend for a couple of championships right now (and the future be damned) may be realizing that they’ll never win anything more than Luka Doncic allows them to.
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As a Detroit Pistons fan, I went through this transition myself in the mid-2000s when LeBron James went shifted from an elite young player to perhaps the greatest to ever play the game of basketball. The specific moment when the shift happened probably took place earlier or later than this, but it manifested itself in Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals.
The Pistons won the first two games of that series by a combined six points, but the 23-year-old LeBron was an unmatched force that couldn’t be contained for long. After his Cleveland Cavaliers won the next two games to draw the series even, James took over in historic fashion down the stretch in a pivotal Game 5.
He scored 25 straight points, and 29 of the last 30 points the Cavs scored over the final 16 minutes of the game. In all, LeBron James scored 48 points in 50 minutes of play in a game his squad won by just two points.
It wasn’t a direct path for James to championship glory, because he didn’t win one for another five years. It also wasn’t the final blow in the Pistons’ Eastern Conference dynastic run, because they had one more Eastern Conference Finals appearance in them but fell short against the Boston Celtics the next season.
However, it was when the Pistons knew that their time of reigning supreme over LeBron James was a thing of the past. Should they meet him again in the NBA playoffs, he was as good as immortal.
Luka Doncic isn’t LeBron James, but the warning signs are there
It’s important to make sure we remember that Luka Doncic is not LeBron James, or anywhere close at this point. LeBron has played in more NBA Finals than Luka has played in playoff games. For that matter, that fateful Game 5 against the Pistons was LeBron’s 27th game in the NBA playoffs.
We can’t put the cart before the horse when we discuss potential greatness, even when we’re seeing it manifest so vividly before our eyes as we do with Doncic.
There’s also the fact that Luka may fare more poorly against other teams than the LA Clippers in these NBA playoffs. He’s making them look like paper tigers, faux quasi-contenders built more for failure than success. Against another team like the Utah Jazz (in trouble themselves, down 1-0 to the Memphis Grizzlies) or the Phoenix Suns in the second round, Doncic may find his stratospheric trajectory stunted a bit.
However, before LeBron could become a champion, he had to learn by losing against the Detroit Pistons, the Boston Celtics and the San Antonio Spurs. Ultimately, he bested them all. We’ll see where Luka Doncic’s path through the pantheon of NBA greatness leads, but at the moment it looks like the LA Clippers are the doormat to his entrance.