NBA Playoffs: 10 best players this postseason after Round 1

NBA Playoffs: 10 best players – 3. Luka Doncic

After Game 5 of the Dallas Mavericks’ first-round series against the LA Clippers, Luka Doncic was in line to rank first on this list. He was the star at the center of the Mavericks’ offensive solar system, and the numbers he was putting up were staggering.

In the subsequent two games, Doncic continued to score and pass at insane levels, playing every possible minute his body could handle and scoring or assisting on the majority of the Mavericks’ points. The offensive load that he handled was not only impressive, but it was also borderline historic.

Doncic averaged 35.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 9.4 assists per game across seven games. In Game 7 he created 77 points, with 46 of his own and another 31 scored directly from his passes. At this juncture of his career, Doncic is first in career playoff points per game, his 33.5 narrowly edging Michael Jordan’s 33.4.

The problem for Doncic was two-fold. First, his teammates didn’t give him enough help, both in missing shots and in stopping Kawhi Leonard on the other team from nearly matching Doncic shot-for-shot. The other problem was how Doncic wore down in the second half of games, unable to sustain his incendiary scoring under the weight of the minutes he was playing.

Doncic and the Mavericks will be back, and it’s possible he builds on this playoff series and does even better next time around. Either way, Doncic is by far the highest-ranked player on a losing team, on the back of a truly insane series, just the second of his young career.