Luka Doncic just wanted to celebrate his NBA Finals berth with an ice-cold beer, but Mavericks executive Michael Finley crashed the party.
While congratulating others alongside his father, Saša, following Dallas’ 124-103 Game 5 road win over the Timberwolves, Doncic was drinking a beer before Finley snagged it out of his hand, seemingly irritating the star guard before he walked off with the drink.
Doncic attempted to grab it out of Finley’s hands, but Finley kept walking as Doncic shrugged his shoulders in some apparent displeasure.
It is unclear why Finley, the team’s assistant general manager and VP of player personnel, stole the beer, although it potentially could be diet-related since Doncic’s fitness has come under scrutiny at times.
During the 2023 offseason, multiple reports surfaced that Doncic started the year weighing 260 pounds, a far cry from his preferred weight of 230 pounds.
The Mavericks asked Doncic to “decrease his preferred playing weight” going into this regular season.
Doncic seemingly looked in better shape early this season, posting several workout videos on social media after the Mavericks missed the playoffs in 2023.
In 2021, Reggie Miller said on a TNT broadcast that Doncic was “plodding up and down [the floor]” and that he wasn’t “really running.”
It would seem the Mavericks want to save the beers for mid-June, as they are now just four wins away from winning the NBA Finals.
Still, a drink was well earned after a strong Game 5 of the conference finals where Doncic scored 20 points in the first quarter to turn the game into a laugher.
Finley, who won the NBA Finals in 2007 with the Spurs and was a part of multiple contending Mavericks teams, was one of the league’s best on-ball defenders of his time, accumulating more than 1,000 steals in his career.
Perhaps none of those takeaways were as smooth as this teal on one of the league’s premiere players, more than a decade after his playing career ended.
Doncic has put the Mavericks on his back since he was drafted third in the 2018 NBA Draft and has now secured Dallas’ first Finals berth since Dirk Nowitzki upset the LeBron James-led Miami Heat in 2011.
Doncic and the Mavericks have a full week before Game 1 of the NBA Finals, which is in Boston on June 6.