This Luka Doncic pass against the Trail Blazers is mesmerizing

When Luka Doncic rifled this pass to Dorian Finney-Smith in the opposite quarter during the Mavericks heartbreaking loss to the Trail Blazers on Sunday night, I looked and sounded like one of those old-timey cartoons when someone sees a pretty woman.

What’s so silly about reacting this way, as several people mentioned to me on Twitter after I noted the pass, is that Doncic does this sort of stuff all the time. Still, I can’t stop watching this pass:

This is not rare for Doncic, he’s been doing it since he was 18!

I love the evolution from this pass before he was drafted to now. In the earlier pass he has a relatively clean pocket so to speak, with just one defender immediately in front of him. Now he’s pulling this pass off out of traps in the pick and roll. Crazy stuff.

For whatever reason, I still think that pass to Finney-Smith is the best of his career. I know people will point to the between the legs dime to Maxi Kleber last season against the Bucks, but the ability to whip that pass from one end of the court to the other, against two defenders, is wild stuff. The list of players that can currently make that pass consistently is probably LeBron James, Luka Doncic, James Harden and...that’s it.

Doncic is on some kind of run right now. He has 90 points combined in the last two games, the most for any Maverick in a two-game stretch in franchise history. Somehow the Mavericks are 1-1 in these games and it’ll likely take more of this from Doncic to get the team back to over .500.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep watching this pass.