In a chat with the media after the Mavericks close-out game against the Timberwolves this week, 5x All-Star Luka Doncic was asked about his experience with the Finals as a child. Candidly, Luka explained that he didn’t watch the Finals at all due to the games being so early in the morning for him and his family.
Interviewer: “Growing up watching the NBA Finals late at night, what does it mean to you?”
Luka Doncic: “I didn’t watch because it was four in the morning and I had school the next day.”
Luka says he couldn't watch the #NBAFinals because he had school in the morning 😂
Now he's playing in them 🙌 pic.twitter.com/0NuS5GbTRd
— NBA TV (@NBATV) May 31, 2024
Despite being unable to watch the Finals in his youth, Luka Doncic will get to experience the moment first-hand when the series begins on Thursday, June 6. For Luka, who turned 25 in February, he’s grateful to be at this stage and admits that it feels good to get so far at such a young age.
“It means a lot, it means a lot,” said Doncic. “It’s not easy. It was a very hard road, very hard. But we are here and obviously, we are not done. We need four more but, today, I think we deserve to enjoy this win.”
Doncic was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia back in 1999 — which is a whopping six hours ahead of New York City’s Eastern Standard Time. With the Finals typically scheduled for somewhere between 8-9 pm Eastern time, that means Luka would have had to stay up until the middle of the night (2-4 am) to watch the start of the games, and it wouldn’t end until another three hours later.
To this day, Luka says he watches more EuroLeague games over the NBA and it makes sense because it’s what the guy has been used to seeing for most of his life.
Of course, Luka didn’t need to watch the NBA to develop his basketball skills and by the time he was old enough to stay up for them, he was already a basketball prodigy making waves in the EuroLeague. Now, just a few years into this NBA tenure he’s already made the Conference Finals twice, including this year when he could potentially win it all.
With just six years of NBA experience, Luka’s resume is already on an all-time great trajectory. The 6’7″ guard from Slovenia is a 5x All-Star and he just had the best season of his career with averages of 33.9 points (league high) 9.8 assists, and 9.2 rebounds per game on 48.7% shooting.
I think the Mavericks can pull this off against the Celtics, but Doncic will have to be consistently great throughout the series and he’ll have to continue playing like a man without fear. Between him and star point guard Kyrie Irving, the Mavericks hope to overwhelm the Celtics with their superior scoring, but the other side will be ready.
As head coach Joe Mazzulla stated earlier, the Celtics will make it a point to show some resistance for Luka and Irving, who have cemented themselves as the best duo in basketball right now. In the previous three series, they were able to rise up and beat the defense but it remains to be seen if they can go off in the same way against a deeper, younger, and all-around more talented Celtics team.
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