The Mavs are in the Western Conference semifinals. Although, to be fair, it must be specified. Speaking of a team that won the title and not so long ago, eleven years ago, a name must be added to the sentence. Luka Doncic’s Mavs are in the Western Conference semifinals. It is the first time since Dirk Nowitzki retired that the franchise has won a playoff. The two previous attempts, with the Slovenian talent as the main value, hit it against some Clippers candidates for everything and who also did not get anywhere beyond moving Dallas out of the way. Now it was Utah, another group with important gaps that have ended up overflowing and flooding with misunderstanding a series in which Doncic was three games out and in which the Jazz, who are characterized by having one of the hottest audiences in the NBA, they gave up two wins at home. We will watch Luka in the next mission, a much more complex one against those Suns who passed him in 2018 and against whom it is always interesting to see.
In six games the Mavericks have destroyed the Jazz. The verb is not chosen by chance. This was a 96-98another very tight ending, and the tie has not gone to the seventh game by a miracle, but the consequences that this fall and the way in which it has occurred can have for those from Salt Lake City are enough to make it look like a devastation and not a simple defeat.
The Jazz let the Mavericks live on Thursday night as well. It happened to them in the second and third games, when Doncic was held without playing due to a muscle injury from which he seems quite recovered, and the ghosts visited them again in the sixth. Kidd’s began fatally, disoriented in a bad first part, and Snyder’s were inadvertently putting them into rhythm. A clean triple comeback took place and, to make matters worse, it was a shot from three in a completely open position by one of the best in this series, the Croatian Bojan Bogdanovic, who separated them from victory and from extending until the final day this confrontation. Many singled out in Utah and one main player to target in Dallas as causing the sweet mess: Luka Doncic. This is not 2011 and the only aspirations are to make progress and improve, which is exactly what has just happened with this promising structure that has been built for the Slovenian.