DONCIC WILL KEEP THRASHING THROUGH CRITICISM, AS MICHAEL JORDAN KNOWS
He was ridiculed after fouling out of Game 3, but not until Dallas coach Jason Kidd ripped the media did Doncic play his best Friday — was it just a temporary turn or did he learn a big career lesson?
My column was positioned on his refrigerator door. Michael Jordan said it once, and given a second chance, he’d deny it. I had no role in his divine magnificence and never stopped him from gambling or drinking tequila, but in an implausible moment, he said my written words occasionally hung beside the superchargers and moon cookies.
To which he shrugged, wiggled his tongue, won six NBA championships and recently became the first pro athlete to reach the list of 400 richest Americans. He will not give me a pair of Air Jordans unless I pay for them. Even then, probably not.
So when Jason Kidd badgers the media for our treatment of Luka Doncic, after Dallas’ third loss in the first three games of the NBA Finals, should I start giggling? There isn’t one athlete on this planet who hasn’t been criticized publicly, including Jordan. What, we’re supposed to ignore it when the league’s next great player turns shambolic at the worst imaginable interval? Doncic is disgusting in his complaints about officiating, as the Mavericks have begged him to stop, and sure enough, he fouled out with 4:12 left and handed the series to the Boston Celtics. Some us ganged up on him in a significant moment, reminding Doncic what the legends have learned in mid-June.
Would he learn? He did Friday evening in a 122-84 stomping, the third-largest victory margin in the title round, playing a fabulous game and ending the enemy’s winning streak at 10. The Celtics will prevail at home Monday night and turn Ben Affleck loose in the streets. How nice if Doncic didn’t need prodding and could have produced without widespread media shots? Doesn’t matter at this point, with no team ever returning from an 0-3 hole — 156 total. What we’re trying to figure out is whether Doncic’s immaturity is in the past or will resurface at TD Garden.
“It’s the first to four. And we’re going to believe until the end,” Doncic said. “We’re just going to keep going. I have big belief in this team that we can do it.”
Big belief, he said. “These are the moments that can make or break you,” said Jaylen Brown, not yet ready to be named Finals MVP. “We have to reassemble. We have to look at it and learn from it, and then we’ve got to embrace it and attack it. It’s going to be hard to do what we’re trying to do. We didn’t expect anything to be easy, but it’s no reason to lose our head.”
“We’re going to have to earn it,’ Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “Our effort wasn’t as good as Dallas’s was. Theirs was a lot better.”
The other question: Will Kidd’s trashing of reporters be short-lived? Did the Celtics merely loosen up with pathetic silliness? Or did the coach drive Doncic permanently with comments he could have made long ago?
“No, I think it's just everybody has — this is a free country. Everybody has the right to their opinion,” Kidd said. “It's just sometimes we might take it a little bit too far, right, and understanding if you put yourself in that person's shoes, could you stand up to the barbecue, right? Sometimes we want to fry someone, but if you reversed it, and it was you being fried, would you like it? Most likely not. That's just the nature of the business.
“But this young man has done nothing to anyone but play the game of basketball. And when he's asked the question, he's never run from it. He's answered it. And he's 25 years old. You know, I think that's what I'm more disappointed in is that we are at the highest stage where we have one of the best players in the world playing the game the right way, but we want to criticize some of the things that he does not do well. But when he does do them well, we are going to come back and want to talk to him, and then when he says no, I'm going to pass, then what happens, right? I think sometimes it's just unfair or unwarranted to say those things.”
It’s unfair to say he mopes on every single damned call? He always has. Will he continue down the road? “No one in this room is perfect, right? So, like, give my man a break,” Kidd said. “Let him play the game. Because we are all here to watch him play, right? So let's just enjoy it. I think when you look at today's athlete, the game of sport is not to be perfect. … He's been on five All-Pro teams, first team. So that means he's one of the top five players in the world, and he's playing the game the right way where he can find open guys. But when you're on the biggest stage, there's got to be — someone's got to poke a hole. This will only make the great ones better. When you look at it, with LeBron (James), Michael, the greats, the G.O.A.T.s, they all were poked at and they came back stronger and better.”
Next came an unnamed target. Which media member bothered Kidd the most? “Sometimes when you are a free agent in the media business, you've got to say something crazy to get a new contract, or likes, or clicks,” he said.
A free agent? ESPN’s Brian Windhorst cracked Doncic after Game 3. Is he a free agent? Celtics great Paul Pierce was let go by ESPN and now appears at times on FS1’s “Undisputed.” His Doncic comment: “Sports is based on reputations, and the reason they’re telling him this is because he’s developed a reputation now that I don’t know if he can scale it back. Because once you’re too far gone in developing a reputation that’s always gonna be there. Draymond (Green) is gonna be who he is, so he’s going to get looked at a little bit closer. Rasheed (Wallace) was who he was when he played, so he was always looked at a little bit closer. Allen Iverson complained a lot to the refs, too. So now, I don’t know what he can do to change this, but they look at him like, ‘Oh no, he’s an a—hole.’ ’’
Not in Game 4. “I don’t read much of that,” Doncic said. “There’s always going to be criticism. (Kidd) didn't say anything to me specifically, but that speaks a lot about him. He always has players' backs. He always supports us. That's a big thing, to have a coach like that.”
Is it possible Kidd was referring to Charles Barkley? After the game, he announced he’ll retire from broadcasting after next season. That makes him a free agent, right?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.