Time gets us all. And in the Mavericks’ dismantling of the top-seeded Suns, Luka Doncic showed his time is now and Chris Paul’s is past.
The Mavericks rolled to a 123-90, Game 7 win that was shocking not in the final victor but in how easy that victory was.
They led by 42 points after three quarters, leaving the Suns — and much of the country — the entire fourth quarter and its aftermath to wonder how the supposed best team in basketball could be made to look so bad?
This meant more to Doncic than it did to Paul
Not to say that Doncic played harder than CP3 (he did), but at 37, Paul’s legacy can only change so much. He’s a surefire Hall of Famer and one of the great point guards of all-time, but he’ll never ascend to the heights of Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West. Juggling the second tier of Steph Curry, Isiah Thomas, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd and John Stockton is just reshuffling the same hand.
But the Legend of Luka is just growing by the day.
Doncic averaged 32.6 points, 9.9 boards and 7.0 assists, leading both teams in all three categories as he bullied Phoenix.
And his 39.0 point average in elimination games is the best in NBA history, albeit a small sample size. He’s ahead of the likes of Alex Groza (33.5 ppg), LeBron James (33.5), Michael Jordan (31.3), Wilt Chamberlain (31.1) and Kevin Durant (30).
“He’s Luka. He loves the stage,” Kidd said. “As it gets bigger, he gets better.”
“He’s built for these moments,” said Mavs guard Jalen Brunson, who had 24 points in Sunday’s win. He joked that Doncic has been dominating high-stakes games since he was 9 years old, a nod to the championships Doncic won with Real Madrid and the Slovenian national team as a teenager.