I am Not Looking Forward to the Luka Doncic Lovefest in the NBA Finals
/While watching game 4 of the West Finals the other night, I found myself turning it off. It looked like the Timberwolves were going to get beat, thus ending the series, and I just couldn't watch the end of the game. Luckily, the Timberwolves won, forcing a game five tonight. But, in all likelihood, this series is all but over and we will have a Celtics-Mavericks finals.
This was the worst case scenario for me. These are the two teams in the entire NBA I like the least. I have never rooted for the Celtics, and since Luka Doncic has come into the league, my hatred for the Mavericks has reemerged and remained high. I do want to say, if this ends up being the finals matchup, I will be rooting hard for the Celitcs. I cannot believe I just wrote that, but it is very true. I want to see Saint Louis' own Jayson Tatum get a ring. But, I will also be pulling for the Celtics because I have a deep, deep hatred of Luka Doncic. That is why we are here today.
Right off the bat, if he wasn't a good enough basketball to root against, I wouldn't write anything about him. He would be an afterthought. But, he is good. At least on the offensive end. So he is easy to root for, or, in my case, truly despise. I have never really liked him since he joined the NBA. At first it wasn't his fault though. It was the writers over at ESPN, namely Zach Lowe. I have written about Lowe's eroticism towards Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic. Since Jokic won it all last season, Lowe had more than enough ammo to shout his love for him from the hills. Now that the Nuggets are out, Lowe has his other white European player to heap endless praise upon while dumping on other players he deems less worthy. This has been happening since day one. Lowe will never, ever say a bad thing about Luka Doncic. And since I listen to Lowe's podcast, I have had to hear about it for a long while now. I will say, the more recent episodes that have some kind of love letter to Luka Doncic in the description, I have been able to easily erase and never listen to. But, it wasn't just Lowe. I got sick of hearing talking heads on tv expunge on his so-called greatness. He is some kind of wizard passing the ball according to them. I'll take Magic Johnson over him all damn day. They give him endless praise for his ability to score in tight spaces and to create said space. I'll happily take Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan for that any day. And, he is less than zero on the defensive end, which none of these fanboys seem to even care about anymore. They will sit there and spout off statistics until the cows come home, and when pressed about his horrendous defensive play, they try to move the conversation back to saying how great of an offensive player he is. It has gotten so bad that these talking heads will find the smallest effort he gives on defense and talk about his "improvement" on that end. It is akin to getting a participation trophy the way they glaze his attempts to play defense. And lately these memes of him shit talking opponents, that these same talking heads will gripe about when Anthony Edwards does it, they all love. They talk about his competitive spirit. They praise him for ripping out his opponents' hearts. They want him to continue to talk and talk and talk because that gives them the ammo they think they need to somehow prove his greatness. These are the same people that chastised Randy Moss when he fake mooned the crowd at Lambeau. Being a Packer fan, I found it hilarious. They don't like the way Jim Harbaugh pressed the NCAA, but they love what Nick Saban and Luka Doncic do.. They feel entitled to say that Anthony Edwards should not have waved at the crowd in Denver when the Wolves closed out the Nuggets. They called that classless. But when they can watch their white savior stare down Devin Booker or SGA or AE, they love it. They beam with pride. And that disgusts me.
I wish I could remember which one of my friends posted this on Facebook, but they said that Doncic is incredibly sports hateable, and not a truer statement has been made in a long time. I also heard Carl Tart, I'm a big fan, say that anyone outside of Dallas who roots for Luka Doncic was probably storming the capitol. I couldn't agree more. This whole love affair with Doncic is coded racism from the nerds who work at ESPN. They have been waiting and waiting for someone, anyone to come along that doesn't look like Jordan or Steph or LeBron, and they have it now in Jokic and Doncic. And that bums me the hell out.
So, I guess I will end this by saying, if the Mavs do advance to face the Celtics, I hope Tatum and Jaylen Brown and Derrick White make life miserable for that prick Luka Doncic. Nothing will excite me more than to see that punk get his ass whipped. That doesn't mean ESPN will stop fellating him. But, it will restore my faith in basketball and the NBA.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing, the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast, and the greatest basketball writer on the internet.
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