It’s always brutal to come up short on the biggest stage of the NBA Playoffs. For the Dallas Mavericks, this arrived after falling to the Boston Celtics in five games in the NBA Finals.
Luka Dončić did nearly everything possible to get the Mavericks to that point, achieving a 50-win season and making a remarkable playoff run by beating their opponents in the Western Conference to have the team reach their first Finals since 2011.
“I’m proud of every guy to step on the floor… Obviously, we didn’t win the Finals. But we did have a hell of a season,” – Luka Dončić
Mavericks’ Heartbreaking End To Season
50 regular-season wins and noteworthy playoff success sums up Dallas’ campaign
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The Mavericks’ 2023-24 season was one for the ages.
After a disappointing 2022-23 campaign that saw them fail to reach the playoffs despite forming the duo of Dončić and Kyrie Irving, many questions loomed about whether they could work together to get the Mavericks to become title contenders.
The duo went on to prove the doubters wrong. They won 15 of the last 19 games of the regular season to have the team reach 50 wins for the second time in the last three years.
They capitalized on the momentum by taking down the four-seeded Los Angeles Clippers in six games, the one-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in six games, and the three-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves in five games to advance to the NBA Finals.
Not only did the playoff run involve clutch heroics from Dončić and Irving, it witnessed key contributions from PJ Washington, Daniel Gafford, Derrick Jones Jr., Dereck Lively II, Josh Green, and Jaden Hardy to grant the Mavericks their first Finals appearance since 2011, the last time the franchise won a title.
However, their run would end in five games against the 64-win Celtics in the Finals. Even while Dončić kept the team competitive by averaging 29.2 points as well as 8.8 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game throughout the series, the Mavericks struggled to produce offensively outside of him and Irving, the latter who also had difficulty scoring consistently against his former team.
Despite the disappointment of falling short of the title, Dončić refused to let it get in the way of everything the team accomplished throughout the year to get to the Finals.
