By trusting Kidd, Doncic plays with cool head
PHOENIX — For a moment, forget Luka Doncic’s 35-point, 59 percent shooting stat line in Wednesday night’s Game 2 against the Phoenix Suns.
Put aside concerns about the Suns’ ultraclutch All-star duo of Chris Paul and Devin Booker hunting him on defense,
The most impressive part about Doncic’s play this postseason might’ve been a statistic he hasn’t recorded yet. A technical foul.
As officials called 54 fouls Wednesday in Phoenix, what might’ve been prime time for one too many Doncic complaints or an in-the-moment emotional reaction instead became a gritty, efficient offensive performance with understate resolve afterward to reverse the Mavericks’ slide with Games 3 and 4 at home.
Luka Doncic scored 35 points, but the Dallas Mavericks fell to the Phoenix Suns 129-109 on Wednesday as Phoenix took a 2-0 series lead. After the loss, Dallas head coach Jason Kidd said that quote “no one else showed… We can’t win with just [Luka] out there scoring 30 a night — not at this time of the year.” At halftime of the game, Charles Barkley also spoke glowingly of Doncic during halftime.
That’s a reflection of his growing understanding that coach Jason Kidd will advocate for him when he’s not satisfied with calls, or lack thereof, in big moments.
“Just recognizing and talking to him during the moments of when I can see he’s getting frustrated,” Kidd said. “There’s a trust that I will help protect him and communicate with the officials of what he’s trying to communicate to them, and so that’s a partnership.
“I will do everything to protect him and the rest of the guys. Everybody looks at the physical [in the playoffs] — but it’s a mental [thing]. A championship team will always talk about the mental warfare that they had to go through to win, and it can be exhausting. But if you can do it together, it’s a lot of fun.”
Kidd joked a few weeks ago that he’d tell Doncic the NBA levies an automatic one-game suspension after six technical fouls in the playoffs — rather than the actual rule of seven — to keep his superstar from another sitout scare.
Perhaps Kidd gave Doncic a different number — zero — when he returned from a left calf strain in Game 4 of the first round.
Doncic has developed a reputation for frequent chatter to officials during the past few seasons.
He drew 15 technical fouls in the 2020-21 regular season, managing to avoid the suspensiontriggering 16th over the last eight games, and another 15 this year.
The NBA also rescinded two, including what
would’ve been his 16th in the Mavericks’ second-tolast regular-season game.
In 13 career playoff games before this spring, Doncic received another five technical fouls. Last summer in the Tokyo Olympics, officials assessed him five in Slovenia’s historic six-game run.
But Doncic has recorded just two technical fouls in the last two months — in losses March 9 to the New York Knicks and March 25 to the Minnesota Timberwolves — and three since the mid-february All-star break.
Credit his bond with Kidd.
They’ve never explicitly discussed how Doncic could cut back on technical fouls, but as they’ve grown closer over the last seven months of the season,
Doncic said he’s naturally started to walk to Kidd during breaks in games and talk with him more often.
With Kidd a Hall of Fame point guard, Doncic has recognized his coach can relay his thoughts to officials in a more patient, nuanced manner than his animated reactions to traffic at the rim or questionable defensive physicality in the run of play. Doncic still snaps. But now it’s for just a few seconds while he’s running back on defense, mimicking a slap to his arm or a grab on his wrist or lifting his arms in protest.
“He just helps me to stay calm,” Doncic said. “If he sees something, he’s going to talk to the ref, and that’s it. … It happened natural, but it was
way easier for me now.”
Brothers — who last month ejected Kidd from a loss to Washington and whistled Doncic for what would’ve been Tech No. 16 — was part of the crew Wednesday night that called 54 fouls and, at times, overshadowed play.
At the first-quarter buzzer, Jae Crowder took what Doncic thought was a hack on his half-court heave. In the second half, Doncic bent over after taking Crowder’s arm to the nose. While walking to the locker room to change his leggings late in the third, Mavericks staffers held Doncic back from confronting a Suns fan that shouted “reckless” comments.
“A lot of times when someone has the ball that many times, there can be a foul on every call,” Kidd said. “Understanding the game within the game [and] when you try to get those calls, I think he’s working on it.
“It’s just his growth of understanding when it’s a green light to go and when it’s time to just back off and move onto the next play. We’ll continue to talk about that — not just with the playoffs, but over the summer. How do we get better? For him, when you look at his stats, he’s having a hell of a year, an Mvp-type of year, but there’s always ways to get better, and that’s probably one of them.”
Kidd might’ve discovered a non-verbal solution, too.
In the Mavericks’ firstround closeout Game 6 against the Utah Jazz, Doncic faced frequently double teams and traps.
What did he think about the physicality after his first 40-plus minute game of the postseason — high altitude, calf-strain conditioning limitations and all.
“I was too tired to complain,” Doncic said. “For real.”