National Basketball Association

Can less Luka Dončić lead to more success for the Dallas Mavericks?

Published Jun. 8, 2021 8:19 a.m. ET

Winning in the postseason is hard, no matter how brilliantly any individual player performs.

For the second year in a row, do-it-all Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Dončić learned that the hard way when going up against the LA Clippers.

A year after falling to the Clippers in six games in the first round of the playoffs, the Mavericks made incremental progress this postseason, pushing the series to a seventh game before succumbing to the more experienced team.

And yet again, Dončić was masterful even in defeat, reminding everyone why he is the premier young talent in the NBA and also showing that more than one man is needed to compete in the NBA playoffs.

Get this: With 46 points and 14 assists, Dončić accounted for 77 of the Mavericks’ 111 points in Game 7. That is the most points ever accounted for by a single player in a Game 7.

In the series, he averaged 35.7 points, 10.3 assists and 7.9 rebounds while shooting 49% from the field and 41% from 3-point range.

In his 13 playoff games, all against the Clippers, he averaged 33.5 PPG, 9.5 APG and 8.8 RPG, quickly establishing himself as one of the most dominant playoff performers not only currently in the NBA but also quite possibly in the history of the league.

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Dončić joined Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only players in NBA history to score 300-plus points through their first nine career playoff games.

But for all of his brilliance, the Mavs failed to make it out of the first round in consecutive postseason trips.

The Mavericks' second-leading scorer in the series this postseason was Tim Hardaway Jr., who averaged 17.0 PPG, 18.7 fewer than Dončić. No. 3 was former All-Star Kristaps Porzingis, who averaged 13.1.

As Jonathan Tjarks of The Ringer pointed out, it might be time for Dončić to sacrifice some of his individual wizardry in exchange for more team success.

"Basketball is a zero-sum game. There are only so many points, rebounds and assists to go around," Tjarks wrote. "The more Luka gets, the fewer there are for everyone else. He’s so good that he inevitably turns the players around him into bystanders."

While Dončić ceding control of the offense seems like a simple solution, it's never that simple.

On ESPN's "First Take," Stephen A. Smith discussed how the Mavericks' lack of free-agent activity has come back to bite them in recent years in terms of building a legitimate contender.

"Repeatedly – year after year after year – they don't have the personnel," Smith said. "Luka thus far doesn't have anybody to play with him. What the hell is going on with the Dallas Mavericks to where you can't get marquee free agents to consider your franchise?"

What will come next for the Mavericks and the roster around Dončić remains to be seen.

But one thing that's certain is that Dončić will be with the franchise for a long time, as he's expected to sign a max rookie extension worth $200 million when it's offered this offseason.

What the franchise does to supplement its superstar after that could determine whether Dončić will be battling alone in the postseason for the foreseeable future or he and the Mavericks will have a legitimate chance at contention.

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