D-day, H-hour. It’s the moment for the Mavericks, the most important game of their season, but also of their recent history. A meeting that will define what they are as a squad and as a group. Also how far they can go as a project. Their basketball year is good, they have overcome a round of playoffs for the first time in 10 years, have recomposed themselves after the departure of a myth like Rick Carlisle and have opted for a small quintet after the transfer of Kristapz Porzingis that Jason Kidd has managed perfectly. And they have even been competitive without their messiah, their leader, their reference, their hero. Without him, they scratched the Jazz, a decontextualized team, for two games in a first round that was later sentenced by the unfathomable Luka Doncic, a man called to conquer the skies. A star who faces his most difficult exam in front of his public, before his people and with all eyes on him. A player who has a constant date with destiny.
The Mavericks have nothing to lose, but a lot to gain. The Suns are the ones who play it, the ones who can’t afford surprises, nor extend a series that was already unexpectedly tough against the Pelicans and that can be worse against a team best. The 3-1 would leave them virtually in the Conference finals, but the 2-2 would force them to play two more games, visit once again, at least, the city of Dallas and face themselves and the sambenito that accompanies Chris Paul and his particular curse in the playoffs. The base also plays it in a series that he does, he has controlled, but without anyone forgetting the ones he also had like this: in 2008, his Hornets led 2-0 against the Spurs and lost in the seventh in New Orleans; with the Clippers, he missed series against Grizlies (2013) and Blazers (2016). And the Finals against the Bucks are more recent. And also, at least for him, more painful.
The script for the fourth game will have to be similar to the one for the third game for the Mavericks: a lot of ball in the post for Doncic and adjustments in defense to free the Slovenian as much as possible. The star was loaded with fouls in the third round (he went to 5, including a very controversial one on Jae Crowder), a variable that does not have to be repeated and that can lead to a key player having more minutes in the end to close a match that promises, this time, to be matched. And in the same way that Doncic’s fouls are not contemplated, neither is Chris Paul’s bad role in the previous duel, with a manifest insecurity on the ball and up to 7 turnovers, all of them in the first half (his top is 8). The base will return to be the man of the second game, the one who sentenced the Mavericks without oppositionand Monty Williams will also return to the scheme that gave them 2-0: change with blocks so that Paul or Devin Booker always have Doncic in front of them, tire a player who also spends a lot on attack and make him tired towards the end of the encounter.
fears and wishes
Many years ago, Phil Jackson wrote in his diary: “Shaq needs and Kobe wants. The mystery of the Lakers“. The mythical phrase is framed within the relationship between the two stars and the inherent relationship between two stars that always went hand in hand with the irreverent, the amazing and, ultimately, the historical. That is where they can be framed Luka Doncic and Chris Paul, not so much as the teammates that they are not but as the rivals that have come to be. The Mavericks won their first game against the Suns in 2019 and the Slovenian player only the second to The Point God. Total, a 9-2 run counting the victory the other day, a record that Paul has accumulated between Rockets, Thunder and Suns and that he wants to assert before becoming a mere past, that Doncic becomes a present that he already is and abandons the band of the project of a future that is also his.
Paul has passed, within the framework of Phil Jackson, from want to need. He has just turned 37 (just two days ago), is in his 17th season in the best league in the world and has obvious wear and tear that he supplies with undeniable talent. But he is running out of time. Minus the highlights and the huge waste of talent, Paul has been all late: He didn’t play in his first Conference finals until 2018, and it wasn’t until last year that he made the Finals for the first time. That said, there is something that was previously unknown, a mere asterisk: something always happens to Chris Paul. Whether they are injuries, mistakes by their coaches, clear drops in level or victories of a simply superior rival, the point guard has always gone hand in hand with bad luck, an accompaniment similar to that which Kobe and Shaq had with glory. Errors and horrors have happened during his career and at the endthe desire incessant to write his name in a story that is not his own has become a need brutal to assert himself and become a star within a cosmos full of mundane people, but with only a few chosen for Olympus.
In the Suns more things will work: DeAndre Ayton does a lot of damage to the absence of a born rebounder in the Mavs, Booker gives the feeling that he lacks 20 more points in each game and that sooner or later he will finish with 40, Mikal Bridges does everything and he does everything well and Monty Williams manages the group chemistry, a known seamless one, without a problem.. Doncic is averaging 35.3 points, 10 rebounds and 8 assists against the Suns, 32.2+10.3+6.8 in all the playoffs (he missed the first three games) and 33.4+9.3+8, 8 in his career at the finals. More average points than, by the way, Michael Jordan and video game numbers transferred to a reality that doesn’t seem so much. Jason Kidd praised his defensive performance in the last game. If he plays well in the post again, he doesn’t suffer from indolence on defense, he finds his teammates without committing losses and the Mavericks secure the defensive rebound, the battle is assured. The bench will be on its feet again for the entire match, with that hubbub typical of precocity, and the American Airlines Center will rise to the occasion. Mavs-Suns, Doncic-Paul, the D-day, the H-hour. The wish. AND, clearthe need.
