NBAs best performance of 2022: Luka Doni backs up his talk as Mavs stun Suns

While we were all locked into quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us huddled around Netflix to watch “The Last Dance,” a docuseries about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls. Michael Jordan was king then, and all roads to glory went through him.

During that run to their second three-peat of the decade, the Bulls found themselves squaring off against the Charlotte Hornets in the second round. We saw a clip of Jordan between Games 2 and 3 after the Hornets surprised the Bulls by taking Game 2 in Chicago to steal home-court advantage. And during the game, Jordan’s former backcourt mate, B.J. Armstrong, had some trash talk for Jordan.

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As we watched MJ contemplate this moment between Games 2 and 3, he smoked a cigar and held a baseball bat in his locker. He was talking to his teammates, but he was really just talking to himself and harnessing the power of petty — something no one weaponized as masterfully as him to provide even more motivation to complete a task, let alone a task of beating down the underdog in a playoff series matchup.

“Let’s see if that trash talk starts when it’s 0-0 instead of a five-, six-point lead,” Jordan professed as he put the cigar in his mouth and gripped the bat with two hands. “That’s where it starts. That’s the sign of a good man, if you can talk s— when it’s an even score.”

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Jordan would go on to lead his Bulls to three straight wins, averaging 30 points per game over those three victories. The Bulls won by 14, 14 and nine points — and we didn’t hear much the rest of that series from the Hornets. The message had been sent — a message as old as time in the world of sports. Don’t give extra motivation to your opponents. Don’t give them bulletin board material.

Fast-forward to the 2022 NBA playoffs, as the No. 1 seed Phoenix Suns battled the No. 4 seed Dallas Mavericks. 

The ebb and flow of that series was very home-heavy. The Suns won the first two games in Phoenix, beating the Mavs by seven and 20 points, respectively. The Mavs responded with two wins in Dallas to even up the series at 2-2. When they went back to Phoenix for Game 5, the Mavs were embarrassed. After getting an early eight-point lead in the first eight minutes of the game, the Mavs completely unraveled. The Suns held a three-point lead at halftime then completely blitzed Dallas in the final 24 minutes.

The Suns ended up winning the game by 30 points, looking like things would be over soon for the Mavs. Devin Booker talked to Luka Dončić throughout the game, just like the two of them had been exchanging words throughout the series. Toward the end of the fourth quarter, we saw a skirmish between Bismack Biyombo and Marquese Chriss, as everybody puffed out their chest in those moments.

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The Suns were a team that liked to talk trash, and we know Dončić is never a stranger to throwing some words around a basketball court. Booker and Dončić had a moment in Game 5 in which he took some hard contact on a foul, laid face down on the floor for 11 seconds, smiled at the person recording on their phone, went back to face down for another couple beats, rolled over to his back so his teammates could help him out and called it, “The Luka Special,” in reference to Dončić embellishing foul calls throughout his career.

Devin Booker called it the "Luka Special" after getting fouled and lying on the floor

— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) May 11, 2022

As the Mavs left the court in defeat, Dončić started exclaiming this for anybody to hear.

“Everybody acting tough when they up,” Dončić said. “Everybody acting tough.”

It paraphrased and echoed those words from Jordan 24 years prior, words that happened the year before Dončić was even born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The difference in those two uttering the same sentiment is pretty severe though. Jordan was established as the greatest player of all time. His Bulls team was a massive favorite over the Hornets, and a two-point loss that included trash talk from a former teammate when the Hornets were up five or six didn’t exactly raise the stakes of the situation. Well, not for anybody but Jordan’s competitive nature.

Dončić, on the other hand, had just been embarrassed in the final 24 minutes of action. His team got destroyed by the top-seeded Suns — a team that had won 12 more games than the Mavs to earn the top record in the NBA. He was responding to the kerfuffle between Biyombo and Chriss, but he was also sending a message for Booker, Jae Crowder and anybody else to hear. Not friends. Not former teammates. Enemies in the series. Thorns in the Mavs’ sides. The guillotine hanging above their season’s neck.

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Dončić, while a fantastic player and one who projects to be a historic figure in professional basketball when his career is over a long time from now, hasn’t had playoff success. His one series win in three years? A six-game series win over the imploding Utah Jazz. Prior to that, two first-round series exits at the hands of the Clippers, including a seven-game series loss the previous postseason when the Mavs went up 3-2 in the series. And yet, he echoed Jordan’s indirect challenge.

Everybody acts tough when they’re up.

In Game 6, the Mavs trounced the Suns in Dallas. Dončić had 33 points, 11 rebounds, eight assists, four steals and just one turnover in 35 minutes. Dallas was plus-15 in his minutes on the court, won every quarter and ended up taking the night with a 27-point victory. But the Mavs still had to go back to Phoenix for Game 7. The home team had won every game of the series, and it’s rare a team loses a Game 7 on its home floor. Since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976-77, only 26 teams had lost a Game 7 at their home arena in 106 games.

What happened in Game 7 was truly astonishing. Not only did Dallas win the game in Phoenix, but the Mavs completely kicked the butts of the Suns that night.

Dončić backed up his tough talk after Game 5 by dropping 35 points in 30 minutes of action. The Mavs led by as many as 46 points in that game. The Suns crowd was stunned pretty early on. Phoenix had a 10-point deficit after the first quarter. No big deal. Those get erased all the time in the NBA. The 30-10 second quarter by the Mavs put Dallas up 57-27 at halftime. That … usually doesn’t get erased.

You know what else doesn’t get erased? This image of Dončić trolling Booker during the first half when the Mavs were annihilating the 64-win season of Phoenix in the desert.

👀

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 16, 2022

It was the image of the Suns-Mavs series, as much as Dončić’s spouting that everybody talks tough when they’re up. Booker couldn’t do anything but wear the loss. Listen to the jeers. See the expressionless faces of his teammates and the Suns fans in the arena. Hear the chatter of the Mavs get louder and louder as his season dissipated into the night. Eventually, the Mavs won by 33 points and moved on to their first Western Conference finals since winning the NBA championship in 2011.

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By blurting out, “Everybody acting tough when they up,” Dončić had to deliver over the next two games without much of an NBA history of doing such. Shout that out and come up empty? The internet clowns you until you win a championship — if you win a championship. But Dončić acted tough when he was down. And then he trolled when he was up, and the series was over. That’s how you build a legend and lore.

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(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)

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