The NBA Finals have kicked off at TD Garden. However, there’s another war that’s set to start between the star players of each team, Jaylen Brown and Luka Doncic, off the hardwood floor. While the two will go against one another in the seven-game series, their bots will battle it out over a game of chess.
Popular chess platform, Chess.com, recently announced that as a celebration to mark the beginning of the NBA Finals, they will make AI bots of Doncic and Brown available for challenges on their platform.
The users of the platform will be able to play against either of the bots on their bot page. The limited time bot-challenge started on Thursday at 9:00 a.m. ET to see which one of the Conference Finals MVPs from their respective groups will take away this honor.
Both the bots were rated 1000 to begin with and their rankings and rating would vary depending upon how they fare against real chess players of the platform. While this is an interesting idea to add to the excitement for the NBA Finals, both the stars have been involved with chess bots for a while.
In February 2024, Doncic’s bot was rated 2500 while Brown’s was rated nearly half of it at 1275. Even though anything above 1000 is considered to be a good rating on the platform, several users raised an issue regarding Brown’s rating. They believed that 1275 wasn’t justified for him and that it should’ve been 1700 at least. This demand makes more sense when we consider the fact that the Celtics star is a chess wizard.
Jaylen Brown and Luka Doncic love playing chess
NBA players are some of the sharpest minds at work in the world of sports. From constantly trying to figure out the opposition’s game plan to putting in a counter for it, they have to be quick on their feet during the 48 minutes on court battles. This skill smoothly translates into the world of chess or cards, whatever they pick depending upon their liking.
As for Luka and Brown, they have been massive chess fans for a long time. The Celtics star was the captain of his middle school chess team and even played during his time at the UC Berkley. Doncic, on the other hand, sees chess as a game of mental warfare. During a conversation with Chess.com, he was asked to point out similarities between chess and basketball.
He said, “You’ve got to read what the other person’s gonna do. So, I think that’s the similarity about chess and basketball.” He also unveiled that he enjoys playing chess with Dirk Nowitzki because he always beats the Mavs legend with his offensive style of playing chess. Surely, Dirk might not enjoy playing chess as much against the Slovenian.
