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There are not many people in sports quite like Luka Doncic. The Dallas Mavericks’ maestro mixes the ability to do the incredible with the sense of bravado to add an extra bit of flair to whatever he’s able to pull off. On Tuesday night, the Boston Celtics learned this lesson the hard way.
The Mavs and the Celtics played a thrilling, tight game on TNT that demanded Doncic went deep into his bag of tricks to pull out a win. He managed to do that and then some, scoring 31 points in a 110-107 victory that was capped off by a pair of monstrous triples, the second of which occurred with a fraction of a second remaining on the game clock.
The first came with Dallas trailing by one. Doncic brought the ball up the floor, getting hounded by Jaylen Brown and eventually getting the switch he wanted onto Daniel Theis. Then, in that way in which he does something so smoothly that it looks effortless, he busted out a step-back triple that got nothing but net. From the moment it left his fingertips, it was evident that he knew the shot was going in.
LUKA DONCIC MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING pic.twitter.com/n39qmqDe4f
— Nick Angstadt (@NickVanExit) February 24, 2021
And then, Luka magic happened. Doncic brought the ball up the floor following a made layup by Brown that tied things up, only he had zero plans for overtime. Doncic hoisted one up from deep while getting double-teamed, but the best efforts of the Celtics were for naught.
LUKA DONCIC CLUTCH THREE FOR THE WIN pic.twitter.com/bQ1cErEPjt
— Nick Angstadt (@NickVanExit) February 24, 2021
Sometimes there’s not much to do other than tip your cap and acknowledge that you got beat. Boston had to do this on Tuesday, all because Doncic decided the Mavericks were going to win, and he’s one of the few players on earth with the ability to make that sort of decision become an inevitability.
