Luka Dončić, Jayson Tatum and the legacies on the line in the 2024 NBA Finals

Ahead of the tipoff for Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night, let’s take a deep dive into what this championship series will mean for the legacies of so many of the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks.

We talk a lot about legacies in basketball, probably too much, but the NBA Finals have an actual impact on how we perceive someone long after his playing days are done, and Dončić has a shot to emerge as a nascent all-timer. He is well on his way, even if his Mavericks lose. His five All-NBA first-team selections at the age of 25 are matched only by Tim Duncan and Kevin Durant, two of the 20 greatest players ever.

Win a title, and we will probably call him The Best Player Alive, even better than Nikola Jokić, since the victory would mark one of the biggest betting upsets in the history of the Finals. He will have to be incredible for Dallas to win, and we enter the series expecting him to average a 30-point triple-double.

Luka Dončić has the opportunity to win his first NBA championship — and the title of Best Player Alive. (AP Photo/Matt Krohn)

His historical place in the game will be harder to peg, because he is still so young. The list of those who made the All-NBA first team on an NBA champion as its best player before the age of 26 includes only Duncan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, George Mikan and Joe Fulks.

Imagine walking into the legacy conversation on that ground floor. This would be Luka Dončić.

Seriously, when Dirk Nowitzki won his championship for the Mavericks in 2011, cementing himself as the greatest player in franchise history, he was a 32-year-old, four-time All-NBA first-team selection. Dončić will have stacked a similar résumé — save for Nowitzki’s MVP and a career’s worth of counting statistics — a few months after his 25th birthday. Nowitzki is one of the 25 best players the game has ever seen, and Dončić will have seven more seasons to add more hardware to his trophy room before he turns 32.

I am not saying he will leave the NBA Finals as one of the 10 greatest players ever, but he has a chance — with his first ring and a Finals MVP —…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-05 16:53:05

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