The emotion inside the building was impossible to ignore, the crowd oohing and aahing at every crossover, gasping at every shot and desperately trying to will the ball into the basket each time a Lakers player launched it.
It felt like the playoffs.
It was the first quarter.
The crowd had met the moment, Luka Doncic’s first game against the Dallas Mavericks, the team with whom he built his NBA career, the kind of game that had the attention of people all around the NBA.
The building was hot; Doncic, the main attraction, was cold.
Following his best game as a Laker when he scored 32 points against Denver, Tuesday against Dallas, he hunted for rhythm — a search that was mostly fruitless.
Dallas fired defenders at him in waves, forcing him to hunt for the slightest openings. One made three, a stepback on the left side across from the Lakers’ bench through a sliver or daylight, got wiped out at the next timeout because replay determined he’d been out of bounds. He made only six of 17 field goal attempts.
But even if this was his moment, Doncic wasn’t in it alone. One day after vowing that the Lakers would have Doncic’s back, Dorian Finney-Smith did the little things. LeBron James did the big things. And the Lakers again, did the winning things.
On a night where Doncic never got his shooting going, the Lakers fought their way to a 107-99 win against a hungry Mavericks team still without Anthony Davis, the key piece they got in the Doncic deal.
“I don’t know, it felt so weird,” Doncic said. “At moments, I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing and I’m glad we got a win.”
For James, it was 16 fourth-quarter points, the buckets coming on a mix of lobs, tips and drives. For Finney-Smith, it was a huge rebound on a rare James miss, a perfect screen for a Doncic layup, a great defensive rotation and a clutch steal.
Despite Doncic’s struggles, the Lakers built a 16-point lead midway through the second quarter thanks to the kind of effort and scrambling that’s made them the NBA’s best defense for more than a month.
Max Christie ignited Dallas, though, with a key block and a pair of threes late in the first half. Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson shot the Mavericks all the way back to a tie score in the fourth before James took over on the offensive end and the Lakers’ defense scrambled on the other.
And even with his struggles, Doncic finished with a triple double: 19 points, 15 rebounds and 12 assists.
The Lakers have now won 13 of their last 16 games.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
