On Friday night, the seventh-seeded Dallas Mavericks could have lost a whole lot more than just Game 3 of their first-round series against the second-seeded Clippers. At the 3:58 mark of the third quarter, with the Mavericks kicking through 13, Doncic rolled his left ankle in a very ugly way. He left the court and immediately hobbled into the tunnel, hopping on one leg. Doncic tapped the ankle again and re-entered the game to start the fourth quarter, but it did not last long. The pain was too much.
“It’s not that bad,” Doncic said after the 130-122 loss to Dallas. “Honestly, I was lucky it was my left ankle. It’s not my right.”
Luka has indeed been having problems with his right ankle, having sprained it twice earlier this season before picking it up again when he slipped at Game 1 of this series. So yes, I think that technically there is a bright side here if you intend to dodge the path of pessimism. Doncic will have an MRI on Saturday. Maybe he will be able to go into Game 4 on Sunday.
But he will absolutely not be 100 percent, or probably anywhere near. And that’s wildly frustrating. The Mavericks give the Clippers, in case you haven’t noticed, everything they can handle. They are 2-1 down, but they had to play important parts of two games without their two best players (I will never get over how false Kristaps Porzingis’ outing was in Game 1).
There’s a very plausible alternative reality in which the Mavericks are 2-1 up in this series. Instead, the Clippers sit in the driver’s steering wheel. And maybe that’s where they need to be. Maybe they are the better team. I’m not convinced of that. Assuming health, at this particular moment in time I could easily argue that Luka and Porzingis are a better duo than Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, the latter of whom is powerfully wrestling in this series. Without Luka at somewhere at 100 percent, though, the Mavericks have no shot.
And so, robbed of a real test for the Clippers, what we are left with is a story as familiar as it is frustrating – yet another playoff series, in yet another postseason, which is largely defined by an injury. We all know that injuries are part of sports. They cannot be prevented. Next man up. We’ve heard it all, and yet they’re just going to stack up for some of the hottest players in some of the major series.
There’s an old saying that the best assets are available, and man is that it looks more and more true. It has come to the point that we may have to refuse recognition of the winner of the NBA Finals as the champion and just “healthiest team” digging at the trophy. You think of the last five champions – there’s an asterisk injury by four of them.
In 2015, the Cavs had to play the Warriors in the finals without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. In 2016, the Warriors lost Steph Curry to a dirty MCL in the first round and he was never 100 percent thereafter. In 2018, the Celtics had to play the Cavaliers in the East Finals without Kyrie and Gordon Hayward, and they still took them to seven games.
That same year, the Warriors were on their knees in the West Finals, with 3-2 down to Houston before Chris Paul ripped his hamstring. Last season, the Raptors won their first title in history, and pretty much everyone agrees that it would not have happened if Kevin Durant did not cut his calf and then tear his Achilles tendon. Then Klay Thompson blew his ACL for good measure.
This year, it’s more the same – to say nothing of a global pandemic. Russell Westbrook has yet to play in the first round of Houston with a quad-strain. If he’s not close to 100 percent above the first round, we’ll probably never know how far this Rockets team could have actually taken this little experiment.
Only when it looked like the Celtics were a threat did Hayward release a grade 3 single and is likely to be out for at least four weeks. Boston should be good in the first round anyway. On Friday, they went 3-0 up against the Sixers, who, incidentally, play without Ben Simmons, who partially split his kneecap in the bubble and recently had surgery.
The Raptors play a Nets team without Kyrie and Durant.
Most of the time, the Lakers are tied with top-seed 1-1 with the Portland Trail Blazers, who have lost Zach Collins (ankle surgery) for the season, and now Damian Lillard has an outstretched finger on his left hand. Lillard will likely play in Game 3 on Saturday, but like Doncic, he will not be 100 percent if he does. So now we’ll probably have to wonder if the Blazers could have really pulled this over with a completely healthy Liillard. This is to say nothing of the fractured lower back playing with CJ McCollum.
There is simply no other way to say this: injuries are the absolute worst. I do not know if I have just never paid as much attention as if they have received more often in recent years, but we are not talking about string injuries for peripheral players. We’re talking about important, often seasonal commitments for superstars.
We all have this pure, romantic idea of the greatest athletes in the world coming together on a court and figuring out who really is the best of the best. No opinions. No asterisks. Just a ball, two hoops and a scoreboard. But it just never works out that way. Because there’s always a big group of guys on the side of the court over crutches. And the fans and players are left to say, until the end of time, “We would have won if …”
It sounds like an excuse. But it is not. It’s a reality. A dragon. And it lights up her ugly head again in this postseason. Who knows if the Cavs of 2015 would have beaten Golden State had Irving and Love been healthy. Who knows if the Warriors themselves would have been in the finals if they hadn’t faced hobbled teams in each round. Maybe the Warriors would have won Games 6 and 7 against Houston in 2018, even with Chris Paul. Maybe the Raptors would have beaten a completely healthy Warriors team last season.
But that’s the point. No one will ever know who the best team really was. The teams, the players, the fans, everyone was robbed of a clean, clean answer to that fundamental question. It should be the athletes who play who define winning and losing. But in truth, championships are more likely to come down to those who are not.
