The West will once again be a gauntlet next season. But the Mavericks, behind Luka, Kyrie and an active front office, aren’t going anywhere.
It was the day before Game 4 of the NBA Finals, but the Dallas Mavericks’ media availability had the feel of early exit interviews.
One prominent line of questioning was about 25-year-old superstar Luka Doncic’s bumpy experience in his first NBA Finals and how he might benefit from it later in his career.
The implication of the questions, as well as the answers, was that this would be the first of multiple appearances for Doncic on the basketball world’s biggest stage. And that he’ll be better prepared when he returns — probably, preferably in a Mavericks uniform.
“I’ve got a lot of things to learn”, Doncic said. “This is my first NBA Finals, so I’m going to learn from it, for sure.”
Then Doncic caught himself, realizing that his comments might be interpreted as a concession before the series was over, no matter how long the odds were of the Mavs becoming the first team in NBA history to overcome a 3-0 series deficit.
“But we’re not in the offseason yet”, Doncic said. “They’ve still got to win one more game.”
Doncic and the Mavs put up a fight — Dallas blew out the Boston Celtics on Friday to avoid the sweep — but that one more game has been won for the Celtics, who claimed the franchise’s NBA-record 18th title in the second Finals appearance for their twentysomething star duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
It won’t be easy for Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the Mavs to make it back to the Finals — not in a Western Conference loaded with fierce competition, headlined by Nikola Jokic’s Denver Nuggets, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s Oklahoma City Thunder and Anthony Edwards’ Minnesota Timberwolves — but that’s the expectation for a franchise that features a perennial MVP candidate who is still approaching his prime.
“When you have one of the best players in the world”, Mavs coach Jason Kidd said on Monday night, “you should always be fighting for a championship.”
That’s the sort of pressure that Mavs general manager Nico Harrison assumed when he left Nike to come to Dallas alongside Kidd in 2021. It’s the intense sense of urgency that Harrison operated under while reconstructing the supporting cast around Doncic and Irving over the past year, giving the stars a chance to bounce back from last season’s embarrassing lottery finish to lead the Mavs to the franchise’s third Finals.
Dallas didn’t sustain the success after its previous two trips. After losing in 2006, the Mavs made it back five years and one head coach later, but Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry were the only players on both rosters.
