Curry, Doncic great in different ways

The rules of the pandemic said one thing, but compassion said another. There was no way Stephen Curry and Luka Doncic could just walk away from each other after a performance for the ages. They met for a brief but heartfelt embrace — something NBA players have been ordered not to do — after the Dallas Mavericks’ 134132 victory over the Warriors on Saturday night, a fitting epilogue to an epic tale.

Doncic was just 16, making his debut as a European professional, when Curry led the Warriors to the 2015 championship. LeBron James was his favorite player, but he must have dreamed about engaging Curry in a memorable scoring duel, trading 3point shots and standing tall against the moment.

Doncic lived that dream Saturday night. Curry had the 5742 edge in points and, once again, left viewers stunned at the virtuosity of his game. But Doncic hit just as many big shots, and in the end, it was the mark of a true superstar — thinking about his team when it made the most sense — that made the difference.

There are no remaining words for the sublime theater Curry provided this night. Fans, media, people around the league, we’ve used them all. But Curry, like all the great ones, keeps daring us to try. Whether it was a fourpoint play, a heavily contested stepback or one of those punishing drives he has mastered with either hand — complete with a foul and free throw — he unleashed the full arsenal. “Defensively, I’m selling out on Curry,” ABC analyst (and Curry’s former coach) Mark Jackson said at one point. “Somebody else has gotta shoot that basketball.”

That’s an undeniably sensible take, but Jackson knows better. All Curry needs is a touch of the basketball, even if a crowd of defenders appears to have shut him off. He’ll find a way. Sometimes it seems he unloads his longrange shots

before the ball fully settles in his hands. It’s an arguable claim that nobody, even the great Jerry West, ever had a shot release that quick.

Doncic is a different kind of player, sizing up a crisis and weaving his way through it with a dozen great ideas. Adept with either hand, a master of footwork, he has a knack for finding the percentage shot from any spot on the floor. Curry destroys people before they realize what happened; Doncic lets them ponder their fate as he goes meticulously to work, somehow at a pace all his own.

It came down to the final 30 seconds, Curry’s 3point drive cutting Dallas’ lead to 131130. The ball went to Doncic, guarded by Andrew Wiggins ona switch at the top of the key. So often, Doncic takes such moments for himself, with everyone in agreement. But he noticed that the Warriors’ Juan ToscanoAnderson was rushing toward him for a doubleteam, leaving Maxi Kleber open in the left corner. Doncic gave it up, Kleber buried the shot with 5.6 seconds left, and the game was clinched.

Interviewed by ABC after the game, Doncic could only marvel at Curry. “Every time he’s got the ball, I think it’s going in,” he said. “Something unbelievable.”

How remarkable that when the story was written, Doncic took the lead.

Around the NBA

When five of the league’s top players speak out against the NBA’s plan to stage an AllStar Game on March 7, you wonder if the concept is doomed.

After Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox said it was “stupid” to force the issue in Atlanta during a pandemic, and LeBron James called it a “slap in the face,” more frustration was expressed Friday by Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard and James Harden.

“The big dog ( James) says he has zero excitement and zero energy for the AllStar Game, and I’m the same way,” Antetokounmpo said. “I really don’t care about (it). We cannot see our families. Deep down, I want to get some break.”

Leonard got straight to the point, saying, “We all know why we’re playing it. There’s money on the line. Just putting money over health right now.” Harden claimed “it feels like everything was forced upon the players” and that the March 510 break “was a week for us to be with our families and kind of take a step back from basketball.”

It’s been a long road back for DeMarcus Cousins, a reluctant authority on rehab after lengthy recoveries from a ruptured Achilles tendon (in New Orleans), a torn quad (with the Warriors) and a torn ACL (Lakers), all on his left leg. But now, with Houston’s Christian Wood sidelined indefinitely with a severely sprained ankle, Cousins has become the Rockets’ starting center.

The Warriors would like to see Minnesota have a bad season, but not this bad. Golden State will get the T’wolves’ top pick in the upcoming draft as long as it’s outside the top three; Minnesota entered Saturday with the league’s thirdworst record. The players seem to have respect for coach Ryan Saunders, and it’s been been a terribly depressing season for KarlAnthony Towns, who has missed 12 games with the coronavirus after it killed his mother and others in his family. Even when Towns returns, his motivation will be in question. “I’ve never been in a mentally good place since that woman went in the hospital,” he said in late December. “You may see me smiling and stuff, but that Karl died on April 13 (when she passed). You’re talking to the physical me. But my soul has been killed off a long time ago.”