What is fair to ask of Luka?

His Game 4 defensive effort was completely divorced from what we'd seen previously. Is it right to expect he repeats it?

Good morning. Sorry about the lack of a Friday newsletter — exhaustion caught up. Better now. Let’s basketball.

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The Evening Air; Henri-Edmond Cross; 1893

The Dallas Mavericks beat the holy hell out of the Boston Celtics in Game 4 on Friday night for a few reasons:

• The Celtics’ shooting plummeted back to Earth

• The Mavericks shot really well

• The Mavs’ stars had open season at the rim (not for the first time in the series), including with multiple lobs (for the first time in the series)

• The Mavs’ defense was especially active

Games like this in the modern NBA slip away quickly for the trailing team, and there’s a window usually in the third quarter to make it a reasonable game and go for the flashy comeback, or hit some bad beats and give it away. It was clear through the entire third that the Celtics had nothing in this one; Joe Mazzulla rightly threw the towel early.

My question is about Luka Doncic’s defense. It was impactful in a way that we had seen only in brief moments all season and all postseason. It was the opposite of what we saw through the first three games of this series, where Boston relentlessly targeted and blew by Doncic.

Tom Haberstroh

has the data and a theory: that criticism of Doncic’s play after Game 3 — particularly the viral segment by Brian Windhorst — sparked Luka’s response. Tom mentioned Luka’s interview with Malika Andrews from NBA Today that aired Thursday as an indication that Doncic knew he was sitting in a bad spot — I just want to reiterate that it’s absolutely wild that the Mavericks and Luka’s management agreed to this interview the day after Dallas went down 3-0 with Doncic fouling out with four minutes remaining after getting destroyed by the Celtics’ scorers all night.

I’m impressed with whoever on the Mavericks/Luka team that agreed to this, whether it had been pre-planned with ESPN’s NBA crew in Dallas for a couple days or not. I’m impressed that Luka took full responsibility for the way the series had turned. I’m impressed most of all that he backed up his comments 36 hours later in Game 4.

My question now that we’ve again seen indications that Luka can defend well and can stay out of a blood feud with the referees when he needs to … is it fair to expect him to do that more frequently? Should the minimum level of expectation be that he’s not a total sieve?