Luka Doncic Will Attend The 2018 NBA Draft After Real Madrid Won Spain’s Top League

It’s official: Luka Doncic will be in attendance for the 2018 NBA Draft. The Real Madrid wunderkind’s status for Thursday night’s festivities were a bit up in the air, as his squad was in the midst of the finals of the 2018 ACB Playoffs. Real Madrid squared off against Kirolbet Baskonia and took a 2-1 series lead into Tuesday night’s Game 4. The series was best of five, so if Madrid won, it would have freed Doncic up to make it to New York on Thursday night. If they lost, though, Doncic would have to play in a deciding Game 5 on Friday.

But in a piece of good news for people who want to see what it’ll look like when Doncic stands next to Adam Silver, Madrid came out on top in Game 4, 96-85, to clinch a championship. As Jonathan Givony of ESPN remarked, it meant that Doncic’s schedule for the end of this week is now free.

The shot in question that Givony alluded to is insane, as Doncic threw up a deep prayer that the basketball gods answered, possibly because they want to see him at the Draft. Or there are no basketball gods and he just hit a crazy shot that toed the line between luck and skill. One of those two scenarios happened.

Doncic was generally pretty quiet on the night, going for eight points, eight rebounds, and a pair of assists. Still, by the end of things, he was understandably all smiles, as his sensational year (and, in all likelihood, his time in Spain) came to an end on the highest possible note.

Real Madrid ended up getting a big game out of Portland Trail Blazers legend Rudy Fernandez, who went for 27 points in the championship-winning effort.