DALLAS — It goes without saying that you don’t let your best player foul out on a weak call late in a must-win NBA Finals game.
The drama of the final series should not be ruined by a foul that took several minutes of deliberation after a challenge.
But that’s exactly what the officials did to Luka Doncic on Wednesday night. Doncic was whistled for blocking Jaylen Brown’s sixth foul. Doncic then watched the final four minutes from the locker room, but Dallas’ comeback failed in a 106-99 loss in Game 3 on Wednesday, giving Boston a 3-0 series lead.
Doncic, who was called for four fouls in the fourth quarter, played lazy defense as usual. That’s partly his fault. He wasn’t moving his feet. Brown was charging toward Doncic, and the Mavs forward was in between taking the charge and trying to avoid it. But Brown shoved Doncic away, and the correct call was no call.
Especially under these circumstances: Jason Kidd called a foul that was ruled unsuccessful, eliciting roars from the Dallas arena, and the Mavericks, who had trailed by 21 in the fourth quarter to just one, fell behind 13-7 in the final three minutes.
Game over. End of series.
“I just couldn’t play physical. I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything,” Doncic said. “I got six fouls in the NBA Finals, so that’s basically what it’s like (gestures palms out). Please.”
Mavs coach Jason Kidd chose the noble path.
“They called a foul. I was stuck. I had to challenge. So … it was a close call so I had to challenge,” he said. “But the ref called it a foul. You have to move on, you have to move forward.”
Somewhere inside the American Airlines Center, Adam Silver was probably hunched over. His league benefits from a competitive series. It’s good for business: More games means more television viewership, more ticket sales, more revenue.
But now the drama has virtually disappeared.
And as New Yorkers, all we can say is, “Boston again?”
The city, decorated with plenty of banners and a goofy Lucky the Leprechaun, is on the verge of adding another one to its collection. As we all know, no NBA team has ever bounced back from such a big deficit before. The Mavericks will be the 157th team to try, after the previous 156 teams failed.
So with a little help from the referee, the Celtics are overwhelmingly more likely to win their 18th championship and break the NBA record tie with the Lakers. Boston would also win its sixth championship in the NBA, MLB or NFL since 2013. In that same span, New York City, which has twice as many teams as Boston, has never won a championship.
Clearly, we are doing something wrong.
And the mistakes start with the Brooklyn Nets.
In 2013, Billy King traded too many draft picks to the Celtics. Those two guys were Jayson Tatum and Brown, who combined for 61 points on Wednesday. They’re still in their mid-20s, and the Celtics are 15-2 in the playoffs this year.
Still, their biggest problem in recent years has been crumbling when it matters most, and that nearly happened Wednesday, when the Celtics managed just two points over a roughly five-minute stretch in the fourth quarter, chipping away at what should have been an insurmountable lead.
And maybe this situation would have been resolved entirely if Doncic had been in the game — or maybe it wouldn’t. We’ll never know, but that’s what’s unfortunate about this call.
