Dallas Basketball

Shades of Luka Doncic Game 7: Nikola Jokic’s Nuggets Humiliate Suns in Blowout Elimination

What Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets did to the Phoenix Suns on Thursday night looked awfully similar to what Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks did in Game 7 last year.

Dalton Trigg

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Around this time last year, the Dallas Mavericks humiliated the then-No. 1 seeded Phoenix Suns in a Game 7 at Footprint Center. It was over in a blink, as Dallas ran out to 57-27 lead at halftime and never looked back en route to a 123-90 victory. Luka Doncic orchestrated the carnage, finishing with 35 points and matching the entire Suns’ first-half production by himself.

After swinging for the fences and landing Kevin Durant at this year’s trade deadline, surely things would be different for Phoenix this time around, right? Right? … Wrong.

On Thursday night in a win-or-go-home Game 6 in Phoenix, the Suns got ran off their own floor once again by a stocky, incredibly-talented European player. Nikola Jokic put up 32 points, 10 rebounds, 12 assists, three steals and one block as his Nuggets beat down the Suns by the final score of 125-100. Like last year’s Game 7 against the Mavs, it was over for the Suns by halftime, as they trailed the Nuggets 81-51 at that point.

As great as Durant and Devin Booker are, they both fizzled out when it mattered the most. Booker shot nearly 80 percent from the field to start the series, which was never going to be sustainable against a good team like Denver, and Durant started to show his age a bit. Booker has now played in three elimination games in his career, and his averages in those games are 14.0 points and 4.0 turnovers while shooting 30.0 percent from the field and 7.0 percent from deep. He is 0-3 and a -83 in those three elimination games.

Some players are built for the brightest lights, and some aren’t. That’s not a knock on Booker, who is arguably the best shooting guard in the league right now, but more of an acknowledgment of just how special Doncic is for the Mavs.

In six career elimination games, Doncic is averaging 35.0 points, 10.0 rebounds and 8.3 assists while shooting 47.8 percent from the field and 36.5 percent from deep. He is 3-3 in those games and a +35.

The Mavs’ front office has work to do this summer in order to make sure Doncic has the right pieces around him to get back to the postseason next year. The idea is to have enough depth so Doncic doesn’t have to run himself completely into the ground by season’s end.

The first step in that process comes on Tuesday night, as the NBA Draft Lottery will commence with the Mavs having the 10th-best odds. Nothing would provide a boost to the franchise like moving up in the draft order for the first time in team history and selecting Victor Wembanyama.

The next step will be re-signing star point guard Kyrie Irving to make sure their star duo stays intact. From there, it will be about filling in the right pieces around Doncic and Irving either via trades or free agency signings. And who knows, perhaps a trade for Suns big man Deandre Ayton is part of that equation this summer depending on the price.

The Mavs know all too well the great feelings the Nuggets are experiencing right now after ousting the Suns. The goal for Dallas is to capture that postseason feeling once again and build on it.

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Dalton Trigg
DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.

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