The emotion inside the building was impossible to ignore, the crowd oohing and aahing at every crossover, gasping at every shot and desperately trying to will the ball into the basket each time a Laker launched it.
It felt like the playoffs.
It was the first quarter.
The crowd had met the moment, Luka Doncic’s first game against the Dallas Mavericks, the team with whom he built his NBA career, the kind of game that had the attention of people all around the NBA.
The building was hot; Doncic, the main attraction, was cold.
“It was just so weird, the moments,” he said. “Felt like I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Following his best game as a Laker when he scored 32 points against Denver, Doncic hunted for rhythm Tuesday against Dallas — a search that was mostly fruitless.
Dallas fired defenders at Doncic in waves, forcing him to hunt for the slightest openings. One three-pointer, a step-back on the left side across from the Lakers’ bench through a sliver of daylight, got wiped out at the next timeout because replay determined he’d been out of bounds.
If he wanted to exact revenge on the organization that traded him this month, he never really could grab it.
“It was just a lot of emotions and not much sleep. But, just, I can’t even explain,” Doncic said. “It was a different game. Like I said, sometimes I don’t know what I was doing. And, I’m just glad, glad it’s over, honestly.”
Even if this was his moment, Doncic wasn’t alone in it. One day after vowing that the Lakers would have Doncic’s back, Dorian Finney-Smith did the little things. LeBron James did the big things. And the Lakers again did the winning things, fighting their way to a 107-99 win against a hungry Mavericks team still without Anthony Davis.
James scored 16 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter, the buckets coming on a mix of lobs, tips and drives. Finney-Smith grabbed a huge rebound on a rare James miss, set a perfect screen for a Doncic layup and made a great defensive rotation and a clutch steal.
“We don’t win the game if Bron doesn’t take over,” coach JJ Redick said. “And we don’t win the game if Do’ doesn’t make three massive plays.”
Doncic had a triple-double — he’s now had one against all 30 NBA teams — with 19 points, 15 rebounds and 12 assists, but made just one of seven from three and only six of 17 from the field. Austin Reaves had 20 points and Rui Hachimura had 15.
“It’s very emotional, obviously. It’s very taxing,” James said of Doncic. “It’s probably a lot of things that were going on in his head that probably didn’t even involve the game itself. And with that said, I thought he handled it tremendously.”
Despite Doncic’s struggles, the Lakers built a 16-point lead midway through the second quarter thanks to the kind of effort and scrambling that’s made them the NBA’s best defense for more than a month.
Max Christie ignited Dallas, though, with a key block and a pair of threes late in the first half. Kyrie Irving (35 points) and Klay Thompson (22) shot the Mavericks all the way back to a tie score in the fourth quarter before James took over on the offensive end and the Lakers’ defense scrambled on the other.
The Lakers (35-21) have won 13 of their last 16 games, locking down Dallas in the first and fourth quarters in particular.
“He defies what’s normal,” Redick said of James. “…This is not an exaggeration if you watch our basketball team every night and you’ve watched our team now for the last six weeks or so. LeBron’s playing at an All-NBA defense level. He is. And now, people may have perceptions of what he is as a defender. I watch it every night. He doesn’t get scored on in isolation if teams do try to target him. He blows plays up. He’s always in the right position, shifting, recovering.
“I think there was this perception of him at this age, like conserving energy. No. There’s no conservation of energy on that end of the floor. He’s played elite defense now for a while.”
While the energy wasn’t there for everyone, James included, consistently Tuesday, the Lakers played good enough for long enough to get Doncic a win he obviously wanted.
“The closure is going to take a while, I think,” he said. “It’s not ideal. But, like I said, I’m glad this game is over. There was a lot of emotions. But we go little by little, and every day is better.”
