During the first half of last season, the Denver Nuggets were soaring, and the general stance of the punditry and a large swath of fans centered around the notion that Denver would run away with the Western Conference. The question was not who the contenders were leading up to the All-Star break but which team—if any—could pose a legitimate challenge to the reigning champs.
Fast forward to the end of the regular season and a shocking 121-120 defeat at the hands of San Antonio Spurs left the Nuggets tied with the Thunder at 57 wins and saddled with the number two seed. Had they won that game - or had locked up the number one seed sooner as many anticipated - the postseason matchups and eventual outcomes would have been far different.
Reality has a way of crashing the prediction party and that is what makes sports interesting. If the outcomes were always “chalk” things would get so boring, so quickly that interest and ratings would take a major hit. So many of us crave surprises and then make predictions that leave no room for them.
Social media is largely to blame. How hot are your takes? Can you be witty or sardonic or offensive enough to spark the sort of outrage that parlays into engagement and eventually a larger audience? It is a tired formula but one that works far too often. Measured nuance takes more than a few hundred characters so opt for the zippy one-liner instead. In this “say it with your chest” era of sports fandom, the implication is that any room left for doubt is a sign of weakness and your “take” should be disregarded.
So many of us crave surprises and then make predictions that leave no room for them.
I cannot tell you which team will win the NBA Cup Quarterfinal as the Dallas Mavericks visit the OKC Thunder later tonight. Instead, I can tell you that many NBA pundits and fans have an intense desire to prop up a new face of the league before they have achieved anything close to what Luka Doncic has. We saw it when First Take’s Stephen A Smith floated the idea of Jalen Brunson joining Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the All-NBA first team ahead of perennial first-teamer Luka Doncic. We saw it when the Minnesota Timberwolves ousted the Nuggets and the Anthony Edwards hype train roared with “he is the next MJ” intensity. Instead of a reflection-inducing walk back after Dallas reached the finals, the Mavericks' place as reigning Western Conference champs is explained away by Charles Barkley as simply a derivative of “matchups”.
Imagine an alternate universe in which either SGA, Edwards, or any other player could lay claim to the Doncic resume. Rookie of the Year followed by six consecutive first-team All-NBA teams, historic playoff performance level, two conference finals, and one NBA finals appearance by age 25. In a vacuum, that player would - even before they captured a title - unquestionably be the face of the league. Outside of Dallas, that level of respect largely is not bestowed on Doncic by pundits and fans.
His detractors seem to have created a cartoonish version of Doncic filled with an exaggerated focus on his worst proclivities: lapses of focus on defense, lobbying with the refs and firing trash talk back into the crowd. This caricature has always smacked of jealousy to me. Which of these rival fan bases would not trade their best player for god-tier court-mapper Doncic straight up? Denver? Who else?
Narratives around which teams are truly championship contenders have already formed this season. If you listen to those same voices who were crowning Denver as inevitable through most of last season, their darlings this season in the West are the Thunder largely due to their 18-5 record and a roster brimming with talent.
Even before Chet Holmgren makes what would be a semi-miraculous return from a brutal hip injury, the Thunder deserve to be taken very seriously. With that disclaimer in place, outside of being up 2 or 3 games in the early December standings, what have the Thunder done to deserve a level of championship contender status that the actual WCF champs do not deserve? The Thunder lost to Dallas head-to-head without Luka Doncic playing after losing to Dallas in the playoffs last season. Sure, some of these games have been close but Dallas has clear matchup advantages and two superstars with undeniable clutch time pedigree.
The Dallas Mavericks opened this season with a 5-7 record far from firing on all cylinders - the biggest reasons for that slow start being the leg injury Doncic sustained early in training camp and the integration of new players into the rotation. Since then the Mavericks are a tidy 11-1 and have zoomed into the top four of the conference. Looking at it another way, four of their eight losses came in a string and all by one possession. Had those coinflip games landed on the other side, the Mavericks would be a sparkling 20-4. How differently would the NBA universe feel about the team?
Regardless of who advances to Vegas, a single game will not settle this debate. Another head-to-head matchup in the playoffs is possible but not a guarantee. The deeper question I spend time pondering is this: why is Luka Doncic - and by extension the Dallas Mavericks - graded on such a steep curve by so many? If the roles were reversed and the Thunder had defeated the Mavericks both in the playoffs last season and in the clash last month but Dallas held a 2-3 game edge in the standings, would the Mavs be heralded as the favorite to come out of the West based solely on an edge in the standings? A dubious notion.
I write this post knowing nothing will change. Asking for a critical mass of talking heads and social media voices to slow their roll on anointing the Thunder as inevitable is like spitting into a windstorm. Nothing short of a championship will earn these Mavericks the respect preemptively given to another team that has accomplished less.