Come on, Luka Doncic.
You’re nipping at the heels of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the NBA MVP Award. You’ve led the Lakers to nine straight wins, the franchise’s longest winning streak since the 2019-2020 season when it won a championship.
And you’re going to get in your own way now?
Doncic picked up his 16th technical foul Saturday after he and Magic reserve Goga Bitadze exchanged words as he shot free throws with 1:19 left in the third quarter of the Lakers’ 105-104 win. (Bitadze was also assessed a technical.)
Luckily for Doncic and the Lakers, the technicals got rescinded Sunday, preventing him from having to serve a one-game suspension Monday against the Pistons.
But this should be a warning.
Doncic knew he was at the technical foul threshold. And he still opened his mouth. He needed to be better at that moment. Smarter. That was not worth it.
Especially not amid his breakthrough stretch, averaging an eye-popping 40 points, 8.4 rebounds, 7.4 assists and 2.6 steals over the last nine games.
His MVP odds have quadrupled over the last five days. He had a 51-point performance and a 60-point performance within a week. Oh, and he made a game-winning jumper in a 127-125 overtime thriller against the Nuggets on March 14. He has been playing brilliantly. He has been hustling on defense. He has been the best player in the league lately.
And he nearly allowed words from a player who’s averaging 5.7 points over 15 minutes a game to get under his skin so deeply that it could’ve messed with his availability?
That’s self-sabotage.
“Obviously, I let my team down getting that last tech,” Doncic said Saturday after finishing with 33 points, eight assists and five rebounds. “But honestly, I wasn’t trying to. He said at the free throw, he would f— my whole family. And at some point, this is a basketball court. At some point, I just can’t stand it. I gotta stand up for myself.”
Wrong.
That nearly cost him a game. It could’ve curtailed the Lakers’ momentum. All for what? So he could’ve spewed some venom back? Where would that have gotten him?
If anything, the incident showed other NBA players his kryptonite. It taught them that a taunt could make him lose his cool. It gave other players the cheat code on how to unravel him.
What’s the point of it all?
Bitadze claimed things went down differently. In a phone interview with ESPN and the Orlando Sentinel, the forward/center from Georgia said Doncic cursed at him in Serbian and he just repeated those same words back to him.
“He said something about my mother, which, it’s really inappropriate,” said Bitadze, who played professionally in Serbia from 2016-2019. “We don’t say that stuff during the game. … So I just said whatever he told me or [about] my mother [and] said it back.”
Honestly, the details don’t even matter. Who cares who said what first? Who cares if someone dissed his mom or his daughter or his grandmother or his ex-fiancee.
The words are empty. Meaningless. They have no teeth.
What matters is Doncic being on the court. Him putting his teammates above his pride. Him putting winning above his ego.
It’s tough because what makes Doncic great also makes him a liability. He’s fiery, intense and as competitive as they come. He was assessed 16 technicals twice during his tenure with the Mavericks, but both times the 16th technical was rescinded.
Against the Bulls a little over a week ago, he used trash talk with Matas Buzelis to inspire his 51-point, 10-rebound, nine-assist explosion. He claimed Buzelis said something “not very nice” to him, and that woke him up.
It’s funny because that situation was also a “he said, he said” moment. Doncic claimed Buzelis trash-talked him first, while Buzelis insisted Doncic initiated things and he merely responded.
Again, the details don’t matter. But there’s a theme here.
Trash talk can bring out the best in Doncic. Or the worst.
And on Saturday, with his 16th technical foul and a one-game suspension looming, it wasn’t worth him taking the risk.
He shouldn’t have engaged.
He should’ve put his head down and found a different form of motivation. He should’ve shrugged off any insult. He should’ve made Bitadze pay for his alleged indiscretion by going on a scoring tear.
With only 11 games left, a one-game suspension is the last thing a surging superstar and a team on a heater need.
Doncic got lucky this time.
But he can’t put himself in this position again.
His team needs him too much.