In the NBA (in basketball, in sports…) there are things that don’t have much of an explanation, more in fact than what would seem normal a priori. And therein lies, actually, a generous portion of its charm. There are also a few, these few and frankly particular, who not only do not need but flee from that explanation and take refuge elsewhere, a different place that has more to do with emotions than with logic or that math With which we now try to bone each game, adapt each result to something that we can predict, organize: to understand.
Luka Doncic’s game against New York Knicks (Mavs won after OT: 126-121) falls squarely into that category, basically defining and updating it. It is closer to the ineffable than to the analytics, their records seem to splash from verses and not from clacks of calculator. It is something majestic, a delicate creation in which you simply have to believe without looking for the trick: good magic is better this way, when it leaves you so speechless that it exempts you from applying rationality, you get a ticket for a couple of hours of pure credulity. Territory of theWhat did I just watch? And everything else.
Doncic he finished the game with 60 points, 21 rebounds and 10 assists. The statistical line is so thick, so gigantic and so impossiblethat the official account of the Dallas Mavericks also seemed to have nothing more to say, only that sequence (60+21+10) that seems to be the combination that opens the floodgates to another world, to a place where the shadows of Wilt dance. Chamberlain, of Michael Jordan, of all those games that, without looking at what was in front of them or what came after them, generate legends on their own, turn children into fans, almost into believers: The NBA, when it produces nights like this, is more of a creed than a League.
This is what Doncic achieved in one fell swoop: obviously his record for points and also his record for rebounds in a game. The number of points in the history of the Mavericks and of any player at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. He is the first Mavs player with two nights out of three with at least 50 points: 50 against the Rockets, 32 against the Lakers, 60 against the Knicks, a total of 142 in those three performances (a prodigy, of course). And, of course, a triple-double atomicillogical, the second in history with 60 points and the first with 60 points and at least 20 rebounds. No one, literally, had done what Doncic did tonight, against some Knicks that he touched. pay the duck. We are applying filters: only six players had scored 50 points in a triple-double. Doncic became the seventh, and the youngest (23 years, 302 days). Only two, no less than Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, had reached at least 50+20+10. By raising the first bar to 60, the Slovenian is left alone. unknown territory. Never seen, literally. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also chose to be short and very to the point, what else is there to do after seeing something like that?
Doncic played (there was overtime…) more than 47 points. He shot 31 times to the basket (21/31) with a 2/6 on three-pointers and a 16/22 on a constant pilgrimage to the free throw line. And the Mavs, more than ever their mavsachieved an impossible victory in a match in which they trailed 99-108 with a minute to go and 103-112 with 33 seconds left. In the past 20 years, none of the 13,884 teams that had reached those final 33 seconds with at least a nine-point lead had ended up losing. It was a statistical anomaly for those in mathematics, a miracle for those in literature. Because there was something for everyone: the triples at a thousand an hour by Christian Wood and Spencer Dinwiddie helped raise the temple of Luka Doncic, which was a game that ended with the necessary errors by the Knicks and the Slovenian in the personnel line with 112-115 and four seconds to play. He scored the first, he shot to miss the second, the ball left his dance alive among a forest of arms and fell, of course, in the hands of a Doncic who scored when he should still be rebounding. The best magic is the one that makes you not wonder anything, with which you do not go from opening your eyes wide. After less than a full minute (out of 48) ahead on the scoreboard, the Mavs forced an overtime in which they were cold-blooded on free throws: 9/10 on what is usually a workhorse for them. The one where they basically couldn’t lose anymore after everything that had happened. It was not a script, it was destiny.
It remains for another day to consider How can the Mavs suffer so much with performances like this from Doncic, how much does the franchise player have to squeeze for his team to live in seemingly manageable games? (50 points to the Rockets, 60 to the Knicks…). How sustainable is such a radical version of doncicsystem And by the way, how big is it? the bite that these nights represent in the race for the MVP. A certain bitter aftertaste remains because Jalen Brunson, who had not missed a game this season, missed his return to Dallas with the Knicks jersey, an already longed for prodigal sondue to a hip problem. And yet, without the terrific little point guard out front, the Mavs had the game. lostdevoured in the rebounds (18 Randle, 16 Robinson) without Kleber or Finney Smith in their front court. It remains, of course, to wonder how a team whose star is now at 33.6 points, 8.7 rebounds and 8.8 assists on average can only be sixth in the West. That if he maintains a statistical line like that, he would join Michael Jordan, the only one with a 32+8+8 in a full season (1988-89).
Analysis, accounts, explanations remain. But there will be many days for that. Sometimes the NBA (basketball, sports…) generates trances like this, which do not require logic or precedents or forecasts. That they go straight to a place of memory from which they will never leave, no matter what happens and everything ends as it ends, lead to a glorious end or a glorious fall. There are games that are liturgies, performances that are impossible, that cannot be explained with physics or mathematics. That they are made perfect from a sum of imperfections like the one that led the Mavs to the well from which they had to escape, more between celestial trumpets than based on blackboard plays. there are nights So of players SoWhat Luka Doncic: unique, practically almightyeven for a few hours and within the confines of a basketball court which, only a handful of times, ends up pointing to eternity. Because we will always remember this night, whose coordinates are already in the NBA history books: 60+21+10. The never seen.