Make No Mistake, The Boston Celtics Essentially Ended The Luka Doncic Era In Dallas

Nathaniel S. Butler. Getty Images.

I'm not sure it gets much crazier than what we had go down in the middle of the night Saturday night. Karim broke it all down in real time as a Lakers fan, and honestly even after sleeping on it I still have zero idea how to process what went on. 

How do the Mavs only get one (1) pick for Luka?? That might be the most confusing part about all of this if we're being honest. One pick? ONE???

I know LeBron made it known that he wanted the front office to make a move to help their roster, but this? Trading for Luka? Who could have possibly seen that coming? If your Dallas, what the fuck are you doing? Luka was your franchise star. He was your everything. Did they not want to pay him the supermax he was eligible for this summer or something? Tired that he was never in shape? According to their GM, that's pretty much exactly what it was

Defense wins championships eh? A player with a defensive mindset gives them a better chance? Now, why might we think the team feels that way?

Ohhhhh right! Because the entire world watched the NBA Champion Boston Celtics completely destroy that dude whenever they wanted on their way to a gentleman sweep in the Finals just this past June

Let's not forget, Luka's defense was so bad in Game 3 that he had to do an emergency interview on ESPN right in the middle of the Finals to promise to play with better effort defensively in a desperate attempt to do damage control. Remember when Windy tore him to shreds?

THINK ABOUT THAT

That's something that really happened.

The way everyone willingly targeted Luka at will defensively combined with the fact that his conditioning was clearly also impacting his offense (he missed like 20 straight 3s or something awful like that), it's now pretty damn obvious that his Finals performance and then how he then backed that up this season still not being in shape or trying defensively was enough for the Mavs to decide to get out of the Luka Doncic business before they had to commit the supermax this summer.

So effectively, the ass kicking that the Celts gave the Mavs in the Finals ultimately ended the Luka Doncic Era in Dallas. Their franchise player, gone. Why? Because once his team saw what things looked like when he had to face not just franchise superstars, but two way monsters in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, they finally saw the light. The Celts showed the Mavs that you can't win a title if your best player is a gigantic negative on one end of the floor and then also shows no desire to ever fix it. They got a look at two players who play both ends, never miss games, and come back every single year better than they were before. They saw a team play connected basketball and not this heliocentric bullshit that leads to big numbers, but almost never wins a title.

Who knows, maybe now we'll get another Lakers/Celtics Finals where you can add in the revenge factor for Luka. I'm sure Adam Silver wouldn't hate the ratings on something like that. 

It's still going to take a while to digest all of this, but one thing is crystal clear.

The Champs ended an entire era of Mavericks basketball. They've had a lot of impressive kills over the last 7-8 years, but taking down an entire era of another franchise all because of the way you beat that ass to win your title is another level.