The Mavericks star, despite putting up 45 points, sort of put the blame on himself for their gut-wrenching defeat against the Cavs.
However, Max Strus had other ideas. Strus, who was on a heater in the fourth quarter to help the Cavs keep in stride with the Mavericks, capped off his heroics in the final frame with an absurd buzzer-beating game-winner from beyond halfcourt, breaking the hearts of Mavs fans everywhere.
For a second, it looked like Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks were going to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night. The Cavs had to converge on Doncic after the Slovenian superstar carved their defense up to the tune of 45 points, so the Mavericks star made them pay with a sweet dish to PJ Washington to give them a 119-118 lead. This was meant to devastate the Cavs, especially when they no longer had any timeouts left to advance the basketball.
While Strus deserves all the credit for giving the Cavs the victory, Luka Doncic saw fit to assign blame to himself for what he perceived was his lackluster defense on the red-hot sniper on that fateful final possession.
“That was my fault. I should have pressed up more. I was the first one, so that was my bad,” Doncic said in his postgame presser, per Grant Afseth of Sports Illustrated. “Incredible shot. I have nothing much to say. Max hurt us in the 4th quarter a lot, but that was an incredible shot, man.