Dallas Mavericks coach Jason Kidd passionately defended his 25-year-old superstar before Friday’s Game 4 of the NBA Finals, saying some of the “barbecue”-hot criticism of Luka Doncic over the previous couple of days had gone “a little too far.”
Then Doncic responded in the best possible way, putting together a dominant, poised performance to lead the Mavs to a season-extending 122-84 win, preventing the Boston Celtics from celebrating their record-breaking 18th championship on the American Airlines Center court.
“I think he made a few people eat their words in a healthy way,” Mavs co-star Kyrie Irving said.
Doncic finished with 29 points and 5 assists in 33 minutes, resting the entire fourth quarter along with the rest of the starters on both sides in the third-most lopsided game in Finals history. He had 22 points in the paint, more than all of the Celtics combined in the three quarters that he played. But Doncic’s offensive brilliance has never been in doubt.
“We were locked in, especially on the defense end,” said Doncic, who had the game’s best plus-minus at plus-30. “We played with pace. It helped them. I’m here to help them in every way I can. We just got to play like that.”
And Doncic isn’t done, as the Mavs kept hope alive that they can become the first of 157 teams to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win an NBA playoff series.
“Like I said at the beginning of the series, it’s first to four,” Doncic said. “We going to believe until the end. So we just got to keep going. I have big belief in this team that we can do it.”
