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    Luka Doncic Makes Basketball Look Easy. It’s Not.

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    SALT LAKE CITY — Luka Doncic couldn’t sleep after playing the game of his life. None of the N.B.A.’s one-name greats — Wilt, Kobe, Jordan, LeBron — had ever managed a night quite like his. He was exhausted, but tossed and turned in his bed for hours, then got up to channel his energy into playing the video game Overwatch until the sun rose.Everything had gone right that December night: 60 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists, an overtime win for his Dallas Mavericks against the Knicks at home. He wows crowds without appearing to break a sweat.“It’s hard every game,” Doncic said recently in an interview at his hotel on the road. “People say that it looks easy, but it’s not easy, trust me.”He smiled. “Maybe it looks easy because I’m slow,” he said.Doncic, who is from Slovenia, came to the N.B.A. five years ago as both a known commodity and a mysterious figure, already a superstar in the EuroLeague but still a media-shy teenager trying to find his way.At 23 years old — “I’m 22, no, 23, about to be 24,” Doncic said — he embodies the N.B.A.’s decades-long effort to have global reach.“Luka plays at the highest level with joy, passion and creativity,” N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said. “He’s an exemplar of this new wave of international stars who are influencing the game in their own unique way.”Mavericks Coach Jason Kidd said Doncic, above, has a “cheat code” for the game with his court vision.Tim Heitman/Getty ImagesDoncic received more than 5.5 million fan votes for the All-Star Game on Sunday night in Salt Lake City and will make his fourth consecutive appearance. His jersey ranks among the league’s top sellers. College teams and even some N.B.A. players play in his signature sneaker from Nike’s Jordan Brand line. And now, after Dallas traded with the Nets for Kyrie Irving this month, he may have the dynamic partner he has been missing as he has tried to lift the Mavericks to their first championship since 2011. He’s slowly stepping into the spotlight, opening up about how he got to this point — and where he wants to go.“I’d rather have the championship than M.V.P.,” he said, “but if you win an M.V.P., it’s amazing, too.”‘He didn’t have any fear’Doncic said he was nearly trembling when he became the youngest professional player to debut for Real Madrid in the Spanish basketball league at 16.He shot a 3-pointer in the closing moments of a game against Unicaja in 2015. “I don’t know how it went in,” Doncic said. “It was the 30th of April, my girlfriend’s birthday. So that’s a good day.”Doncic is now known for wanting the ball with the game on the line.“Some people are just put on the planet and they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” said Bill Duffy, Doncic’s agent, who has known him since he was 14.Those who recall Doncic’s early days in Slovenia describe his play as the merging of genetic gifts and tunnel-vision devotion. His father, Sasa Doncic, played professionally for years. He had “the greatest court vision,” said Damir Radenovic, who practiced with Sasa Doncic and is the marketing director for the Basketball Federation of Slovenia.Luka Doncic could always be found in his father’s shadow, begging to take shots during downtime or talking in the locker room. “He learned, maybe unconsciously, some of those veteran things,” said Marko Milic, a Mavericks assistant coach who was the first Slovene player drafted into the N.B.A., in 1997.Playing against children his own age was too easy for Doncic. Grega Brezovec coached an 8-year-old Doncic for about 13 minutes. “OK, Luka, this is not for you,” he recalled telling him before moving him up to a group of 12- to 14-year-olds.Doncic wanted to play so often that Jernej Smolnikar, another of his youth coaches, worried about how his prepubescent body would absorb some of the drills. He occasionally tried sending Doncic home, only for Doncic to plead with his parents to call Smolnikar to let him back on the court.At 13, Doncic left Slovenia, signing a five-year contract with Real Madrid.Doncic was a star for Real Madrid as a teenager. He was named the most valuable player of the Adidas Next Generation Tournament in 2015.Luca Sgamellotti/Euroleague Basketball, via Getty ImagesAlberto Angulo, a former Real Madrid player and director of the Real Madrid Academy, said in an interview in Spanish that Sasa Doncic saw it as a good development opportunity. Mirjam Poterbin, Luka’s mother, was more reluctant, he said.Doncic was wary of leaving the familiarity of his home and mulled the decision for months. “Then the last week came, I made a decision,” he said. “I just decided to.”Real Madrid had rules designed to build character in its young players — no hats in the dining room, finish your dinner, be on time. Doncic once overslept for a morning meeting. Coaches sat him the next game.“To punish a player, you take away what they love the most,” Angulo said.Doncic never overslept again. He wanted the chance to sharpen his game, Angulo said.“He didn’t have any fear — in fact the opposite — of bringing in a player that could be better than him or take minutes away from him,” Angulo said. “He thought, ‘No, no no, if he’s good, he’ll make me better.’”Doncic was named the most valuable player of the under-16 Spain championship. But Doncic said he missed his friends and being home.“So that’s one part I’m never going to get back, but I think it’s worked,” he said.He added: “If I had it to do again, I would do it.”‘That’s the cheat code’In every N.B.A. generation, a player or two can see the future. In the 1980s, it was Magic Johnson. In the 1990s, there were Jason Kidd and Steve Nash. Then LeBron James and Chris Paul came along. Now it’s Doncic who can see a play or two ahead.“It’s not all about speeding,” Doncic said. “Obviously, speeding would be even better. But it’s just the angles, the timings.”He isn’t fast like other top guards, but he said his legs give him an edge for getting into advantageous positions. “I was just born like this,” he said. “My father is like this. His legs are really strong. The trainers call them tree-trunk legs.”Dorian Finney-Smith, who signed with the Mavericks two years before Doncic was drafted, laughed as he recalled the origins of Doncic’s now trademark step-back shot. Doncic tried one in a game. Rick Carlisle, then Dallas’s coach, said it a was bad shot and told Doncic to put it where the sun doesn’t shine, Finney-Smith said.“Against the Sixers, he came out, made three in a row,” Finney-Smith said. “Nobody else said nothing else about that step-back.”Kidd, who took over as Mavericks coach last season, said he could tell Doncic viewed the game the way he did from their first game together.Doncic has one of the top-selling jerseys in the N.B.A.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesDoncic leads the N.B.A. in scoring, with 33.3 points per game.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesA defender had ducked under a screen. Kidd called a timeout, but before he spoke, Doncic told him that he had seen it and would take advantage of it.“That’s the cheat code, and some are born with it, some are not and some can take it to a different level,” Kidd said.Doncic plays dominoes with Kidd on team plane rides, and he loves chess. He plays on his phone so often that Chess.com recently partnered with him. “I always say basketball, you try to play like chess,” Doncic said. “We’re trying to anticipate opponents’ moves and read the game.”Kidd likes to push Doncic. He has jokingly asked him if he can pull a Klay Thompson and score 60 points on just 11 dribbles.“When you have a Picasso-like player, you got to challenge him in other ways to be successful because there could be boredom,” Kidd said. “Because he’s seen everything.”‘He markets himself’The Phoenix Suns trailed badly in Game 7 of the 2022 Western Conference semifinals. By halftime, Doncic had as many points as all of the Suns. As he leaned over in one moment, he looked up at Suns guard Devin Booker and grinned, creating a cutting and defining meme for the Dallas victory. He has racked up dozens of technical fouls in his career, but not this time. “I was like just: ‘Don’t blow this, please. Let’s not do this,’” Doncic said.Dallas lost to the Golden State Warriors, the eventual champions, in the conference finals.“It was really hard to win against them,” Doncic said. “We won only one game. But you can learn from them. You can learn from losses.”He also had a brief chance to learn from a Dallas legend: Dirk Nowitzki, 44, who retired from the Mavericks after Doncic’s rookie season. Nowitzki, who is from Germany, said he initially wondered if he belonged in the N.B.A. But he was a trendsetter for international players thriving in the league.“If you look at some of the M.V.P. candidates now with Jokic, Giannis and Luka in the mix now every year, that already tells you where European basketball is at the moment,” Nowitzki said, referring to Nikola Jokic of Serbia and Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece. He added of Doncic: “He’s tons of fun to be around. He’s cheeky, he’s funny and he’s got a good heart.”Dirk Nowitzki, right, played for Dallas for 21 seasons. He set the stage for international players like Doncic, left, to thrive in the N.B.A.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesDoncic is steering the N.B.A.’s future.“His play supersedes everything,” Mark Cuban, the owner of the Mavericks, wrote in an email. “We don’t really have to market him. He markets himself.”The rapper Bad Bunny frequently mentions Doncic in his music. “When you hear your name in a song from Bad Bunny, it’s amazing,” Doncic said.Doncic recently went viral after he came to a game in a doomsday-looking Apocalypse HellFire truck. He’d been wanting a six-wheeler like it for a long time. He used to stand in the street, marveling at the cars here; they’re much nicer than in Slovenia, he said.But he said his life is low-key.Doncic and his girlfriend, Anamaria Goltes, have known each other since they were children. They share three dogs, Hugo, Gia and Viki, who help Doncic escape from the game he has chased all his life.“They don’t know if you had good or bad game,” Doncic said. “They’re just happy to see you. So they bring a real joy to my life.”He already has his retirement planned out.Doncic wants to farm.“It’s slow,” he said.James Wagner More

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      Dallas Mavericks Save Season With Win Over Golden State

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      Dallas staved off elimination by Golden State behind Luka Doncic’s near triple-double. But the mass shooting in Uvalde loomed over the game.DALLAS — After a second-quarter stoppage in play, Luka Doncic of the Mavericks rose from one leg and tossed up a meaningless shot from beyond the 3-point line whose sole purpose seemed to be to entertain Doncic himself. It was a skyscraper, the ball hurtling toward the rafters before plummeting to Earth. It took one hard bounce off the court and then rattled through the hoop.As they waded into Tuesday’s playoff game against the Golden State Warriors, the Mavericks had to be wondering whether they could make shots with any consistency. Their season depended on it.While Doncic’s circus shot didn’t count, the degree of difficulty was outrageous. (Welcome to Luka’s World.) The crowd roared. And for a team on the ropes, it was a sign of good things to come.A major comeback can only begin with a modest first step, and Dallas is banking on the hope — however remote — that its 119-109 win over Golden State on Tuesday night in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals is a building block for a miracle.“We’re going to believe until the end,” said Doncic, who made several more conventional shots as the game moved along, finishing with 30 points, 14 rebounds and 9 assists. “We got more to do, you know. This is nothing.”You may have heard this before, but no team has overcome a three-games-to-none deficit in N.B.A. history. After avoiding elimination, Dallas, which now trails in the series, 3-1, wants to become the first. Game 5 is on Thursday in San Francisco.Stephen Curry led Golden State with 20 points but sat for most of the fourth quarter, with the game seemingly out of reach.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“We want to do something special,” the Mavericks’ Dorian Finney-Smith said. “It’s going to be very hard, but we can do it. We just got to stick together.”If nothing else, Tuesday’s win was a credit to the Mavericks and their resilient young core. They could have folded up for the season after polluting Game 3 with a buffet of ugly jump shots. In the loss, they went 13 of 45 from 3-point range. Reggie Bullock missed all 10 of his field-goal attempts.On Tuesday, the Mavericks shot 20 of 43 from 3-point range, assisted on 30 of their 41 field goals and unboxed a new-and-improved version of Bullock, who made 6 of his 10 3-point attempts.“It was almost like an ego win,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said, referring to the Mavericks. “You come out and you really have nothing to lose, so that confidence started early. We didn’t really do nothing to slow it down, and that’s when the avalanche starts. So it’s a good lesson learned. You tip your hat to them because they made a lot of shots.”After scuffling through a couple of injury-marred, playoff-free seasons, Golden State remains one win from its first conference championship since 2019. But throughout the postseason, the team has faltered — at least momentarily — when it has come to eliminating its opponents.In the first round, the Denver Nuggets avoided a sweep by defeating Golden State in Game 4. In the conference semifinals, the Memphis Grizzlies prolonged their series with a 39-point win. For both the Nuggets and the Grizzlies, the reprieve was temporary: Golden State closed out each series in the subsequent game.The Mavericks present a different type of challenge. For long stretches of Tuesday’s game, Golden State went to a zone defense, which Dallas Coach Jason Kidd took as a compliment.“Because they can’t play us one-on-one,” he said.It was an odd game, both somber and then celebratory in its own muted way. It was played hours after at least 19 children and two adults were killed by a gunman at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, about 350 miles southwest of Dallas. At his pregame news conference, Golden State Coach Steve Kerr made an emotional plea for gun control legislation, while Kidd declined to answer questions about basketball.“We’re going to try to play the game,” Kidd said. “We have no choice.”Afterward, Kerr struggled to put the night into any sort of palatable context.“It’s too much to fathom, too much to comprehend,” he said. “We move on and we hope that someone actually decides to value our citizens’ lives more than they value money and power.”On a rainy evening, the start of the second half was delayed by leaks in the roof. By then, the Mavericks had a 15-point lead and were looking to build their momentum.It was not going to be easy: Golden State has a well-deserved reputation for pulverizing teams coming out of halftime. In fact, through the first three games of the series, the Warriors had outscored the Mavericks by a total of 31 points in the third quarter. Kidd was not overly concerned.“This group doesn’t let anything faze them,” he said.Sure enough, Dallas shot 8 of 13 from 3-point range in the third quarter to extend its lead to 29. Golden State made a late run with its reserves, but fell short.It is an obvious observation, but Doncic cannot do it alone — not against Golden State. He certainly tried to do his part in Game 2, when he scored 42, and in Game 3, when he scored 40. The Mavericks lost both.On Tuesday, he got help from lesser lights like Bullock and Finney-Smith, and even from Maxi Kleber, who came off the bench to snap his series-long nightmare by shooting 5 of 6 from the field.“If they make shots,” Doncic said, “I think it’s tough to beat us.”The Mavericks just need to do more of the same three more times. No circus shots required. More

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      The Dallas Mavericks Just May Not Be Good Enough Yet

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      With Golden State one win from the N.B.A. finals, Dallas is already talking about the off-season. Luka Doncic said he was “still learning.”DALLAS — Jason Kidd, the coach of the Mavericks, had a concise message for his players before Game 3 of the N.B.A.’s Western Conference finals on Sunday night.Open shots, he reminded them in the locker room, are easier to make than contested shots, so get into the paint and draw Golden State defenders. Do that, and space will open up on the perimeter.“Attack, attack, attack,” said Kidd, his voice betraying no small amount of urgency. “Make them work.”It was a smart strategy, and sure enough, it worked. The Mavericks generated a respectable number of clean looks at 3-pointers. The problem? They couldn’t make many of them. Luka Doncic, the team’s star point guard, offered a synopsis.“Sometimes you feel like you’re open and everybody knows you can make a shot, and then just miss,” he said. “It gets you quite a little bit down.”It was the latest installment of a series-long nightmare for the Mavericks, whose 109-100 loss put them on the brink of elimination. Golden State can complete a four-game sweep on Tuesday, and if that isn’t dire enough for Dallas, there is also this heavily recited piece of trivia: No team in league history has come back from the three-games-to-none series deficit the Mavericks are facing.“It’s not over yet,” Doncic said, “but it’s not going to be easy.”Not against an opponent that Kidd described as a “dynasty.” Not against the likes of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, together again after wading through two injury-ravaged seasons to lead the Warriors to the cusp of their first N.B.A. finals appearance since 2019.But Golden State is also a potent blend of new and old. For a stretch of the third quarter, the Warriors went with a box-and-1 defense as Moses Moody, the first-year guard, defended Doncic after receiving guidance from Green. In the fourth quarter, Andrew Wiggins, who has been playing his finest basketball since joining the team in 2020, nearly dunked Doncic into oblivion.“That was impressive,” Doncic said, “I’m not going to lie.”And Jordan Poole, the third-year guard who took advantage of the team’s lean seasons to develop into an explosive playmaker, sealed the win with a late-game 3-pointer.“They just stay connected throughout the entire game, whether they’re down 20 or up 20,” the Mavericks’ Jalen Brunson said. “You can see that. It’s just very evident.”Jalen Brunson, center, has been one of Dallas’s best performers in the playoffs. He had 20 points on 7 of 12 shooting on Sunday.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesIt must be small consolation for them right now, but the Mavericks are learning some valuable lessons — many of the same lessons that the Memphis Grizzlies learned in the last round when they succumbed to Golden State’s experience and wisdom and all-around cohesive play. While Kidd stopped short of conceding the series, he acknowledged as much.“As we reflect this summer, whenever that starts, we’ll understand what we did and how we can get better,” he said. “We’re going to keep fighting, but we’re also going to get better from this experience.”Give the Mavericks credit for trying to adjust their approach after blowing a 19-point lead in Game 2.That adjustment was on display early in the second quarter of Game 3, as the Mavericks — once, twice, three times — penetrated into the paint, continually sending passes to the perimeter in search of a quality shot. It was only when they dribbled into the teeth of the defense for a fourth time that Dorian Finney-Smith spotted Brunson behind the 3-point line. He drained the shot.Later in the quarter, Brunson repaid the favor when he picked up his dribble near the left elbow. As a slew of Golden State defenders converged on him, Brunson whipped the ball to Finney-Smith for another 3-pointer, which pushed Dallas’s lead to 6.But that was as good as it got for the Mavericks, who were otherwise woeful from the 3-point line, shooting 13 of 45. Reggie Bullock missed all seven of his 3-point attempts. Maxi Kleber was 0 for 5.“We just didn’t shoot the ball well,” Kidd said. “We’re getting good looks, and they’re just not dropping.”There were other problems. One of them was named Stephen Curry, who collected 31 points and 11 assists while shooting 5 of 10 from 3-point range. The Mavericks also gave up too many offensive rebounds, and they wasted another valiant effort from Doncic. After scoring 42 points on Friday, he went for 40 on Sunday. The Mavericks lost both games.“I’m still learning,” he said.Stephen Curry had 31 points — including five 3-pointers — in Golden State’s win.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesIf nothing else, the Mavericks are going to win or lose by being themselves — and unapologetically so. There is no greater illustration of this phenomenon than the behavior of their players on the bench, who have been treading a fine line between enthusiastic and obnoxious. They cheer. They dance. But they also stand precariously close to the court, which has caused issues.On Friday, for example, Curry threw a pass to an open player who was calling for the ball. The problem was that the open player was Theo Pinson, an inactive player for the Mavericks. Curry had mistaken Pinson’s white shirt for a Golden State jersey.“It was a good pass,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said, deadpan. “He was open.”The league subsequently fined the Mavericks $100,000 for continuing to violate league rules regarding “team bench decorum.” On multiple occasions, the league said in a statement, players and at least one member of the coaching staff had encroached on the playing surface. It was the third time the league had fined the Mavericks in the postseason for the extracurriculars of their bench.“We’re not going to sit,” Kidd said before Game 3. “We’re going to cheer.”By the end of night, Golden State had rendered them silent. More

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      Blazers’ Billups Hire Draws Attention to Sexual Assault Accusation

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      Chauncey Billups was announced as Portland’s head coach on Tuesday as a team executive dodged and deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Billups.At a news conference on Tuesday, the top basketball executive for the Portland Trail Blazers dodged or deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Chauncey Billups, whom he was announcing as the team’s new head coach. A public relations official for Portland cut off a questioner entirely, and the executive, Neil Olshey, would not elaborate on an independent investigation into the incident he said the team had commissioned.Billups’s hire has elicited criticism both from within and outside Portland’s fan base because of the accusation, which was made during Billups’s 1997-98 rookie season as a player with the Boston Celtics.Olshey, the Blazers’ president of basketball operations, introduced Billups on Tuesday and said that he had “been successful at everything he’s done in his life, on and off the court.”He also said that the Blazers “took the allegations very seriously” and that “other N.B.A. organizations, business partners, television networks, regional networks have all enthusiastically in the past and present offered Chauncey high-profile positions within their organizations.” Billups is currently finishing his first season as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers, who are in the Western Conference finals, and he was previously an analyst for ESPN.Olshey said the team-initiated investigation was done with Billups’s support. “The findings of that incident corroborated Chauncey’s recollection of the events that nothing non-consensual happened,” he said. “We stand by Chauncey. Everyone in the organization.”Neil Olshey, right, Portland’s president of basketball operations, said the team commissioned an independent investigation of the sexual assault accusation against Billups, left.Craig Mitchelldyer/Associated PressWhen asked by a reporter to give more details on the investigation, Olshey declined.“So that’s proprietary, Sean,” Olshey said, referring to the N.B.A. reporter Sean Highkin. “So you’re just going to have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed.”Jason Quick, a reporter for The Athletic, followed up later to ask Billups about the impact the incident had on him, after Billups had said that “not a day that goes by that I don’t think about how every decision that we make could have a profound impact on a person’s life.” Olshey took a sip of bottled water and appeared to glance at a public relations official for the organization, who then cut off Quick, though Billups appeared willing to respond.“Jason, we appreciate your question,” the official said. “We’ve addressed this. It’s been asked and answered. Happy to move on to the next question here.”The 1997 accusation came from a woman who said in a lawsuit that on the night of Nov. 9, following an evening at a Boston comedy club, she was raped by Billups, Ron Mercer and Michael Irvin — who is of no relation to the former N.F.L. player — at Antoine Walker’s home. Walker and Mercer were Billups’s teammates in Boston, while Irvin was Walker’s roommate. No criminal charges were filed. Billups and Mercer settled with the woman for an undisclosed amount in 2000, and Walker also settled a lawsuit with the woman soon after. Billups denied any nonconsensual contact, but said he had sex with her.The lawsuit did not affect Billups’s career prospects. It rarely came up, if at all. He played 17 years in the N.B.A., made five All-Star teams and won the N.B.A. finals Most Valuable Player Award in 2004.“I learned at a very young age as a player, and not only a player, but a young man, a young adult that every decision has consequences,” Billups said on Tuesday, in addressing the accusation, “and that’s led to some really, really healthy but tough conversations that I’ve had to have with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time in 1997, and my daughters about what actually happened and about what they may have to read about me in the news.”Damian Lillard, Portland’s star guard, publicly lobbied for the team to hire Jason Kidd as its coach and spoke highly of Billups. He has since said he did not know about the accusation against Billups.Troy Wayrynen/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe hiring of Billups immediately spurred a backlash, with the Trail Blazers being accused of glossing over the assault accusation at the expense of more experienced candidates like Becky Hammon, the seven-year San Antonio Spurs assistant who was a finalist for the job. Olshey said more than 20 candidates were considered for the role. Billups’s only coaching experience is this season with the Clippers.The Billups hiring also has brought criticism on the franchise’s biggest star, Damian Lillard, who spoke glowingly about Billups and publicly lobbied for the team to hire the former point guard Jason Kidd, who was recently hired as the coach of the Dallas Mavericks after working this season as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2001, Kidd pleaded guilty to spousal abuse against his then-wife, Joumana Kidd.On Twitter, Lillard addressed some of the criticism for supporting Kidd and Billups, saying: “Really? I was asked what coaches I like of the names I ‘heard’ and I named them. Sorry I wasn’t aware of their history I didn’t read the news when I was 7-8 yrs old. I don’t support Those things … but if this the route y’all wana come at me… say less.”At the news conference, Olshey said that Lillard had been “involved in the process” for hiring a new coach and that he attended some of the video conference interviews. According to Olshey, Lillard also spoke to Billups directly before the hire.“We have different sectors in this organization,” Olshey said. “And, you know, Dame represents the player sector, and we took his input in the process. We value it. It’s important to us to kind of know where he stands. But at the end of the day, this is an organizational decision and the organization believes that Chauncey is the best person to be our head coach.” More