DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks are on a seven-game winning streak with a 123-113 win over the Phoenix Suns on Thursday.
It's true that Dallas' strange season has been avoided so far. He's full of injuries. Kyrie Irving missed 22 games and was a constant concern. Breakout rookie starter Derek Lively II missed 18 games. Dante Exum, another key rotation player, has missed 24 games and was unavailable for Thursday's game, but is expected to return for the team's upcoming four-game road trip. Despite being traded to the Mavericks before last season's trade deadline, Irving only played in 45 total games with Luka Doncic. For example, that's fewer games than Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard have played together this year alone (49).
Facing the trade deadline two weeks ago, the Mavericks won some, lost some, but overall despite Doncic's MVP-level play and an injury asterisk that might only matter to them had to evaluate a team that turned out to be a middling Western Conference roster. . In order to make immediate improvements, they have chosen to put more effort into this season, avoiding acquiring a future first-round pick outright or in a trade that would take away the team's autonomy. PJ Washington from the Charlotte Hornets and Daniel Gafford from the Washington Wizards. And, pardoning the mostly easy schedule, they will enter the season with the league's longest winning streak, tied with the Boston Celtics.
But Phoenix never slackened on its schedule. This was the team Dallas needed to beat to secure a match that could be a very important head-to-head tiebreaker. But more than that, that's why Dallas won. Throughout the first half, Phoenix often led by double digits, including leading by 11 points five minutes into the second quarter. But Dallas fought back against them meticulously, making several threes and bursting ahead in the opening minutes of the second half in a performance highlighted by the team's defense. At one point, Dallas ran out of a lineup that featured two stars in Doncic and Irving behind Washington, Gafford and Maxi Kleber.
“That was (a) big lineup,” Doncic said after the game. “I like that.”
Dallas has been a dangerous team this season whenever Doncic and Irving share the floor. It got even better after Lively came on board. Among the team's three-man units that have played at least 250 minutes together, they are the Mavericks' second-best trio, outscoring their opponents by 12.3 points per 100 possessions. But what's interesting about Thursday's team's recent win over its biggest rival is that Lively, especially as a rookie center who just turned 20 this month, has questionable overall importance to the team's success this season. ) didn't play much in the second game. half. That's not because he's not important to the team's future or other matchups, but because the team had other options that would work better against Phoenix.
“We're deep,” coach Jason Kidd said. “This is the first time the Mavs have been deep for a long time.”
Kidd will have a lineup challenge for the first time since he was hired in 2021, and that challenge will be even greater with Exum's return. But unlike last season's disaster and last season's overworked rotation, they are a benefit to the team. Despite Green's great play, should Exum take away Tim Hardaway Jr.'s play or even Josh Green's playing time? Should a resurgent Kleber play as the sole center, as he played most of the fourth quarter, rather than a traditional non-shooting option like Lively or Gafford? Where does Derrick Jones Jr. fit into the rotation, blocking Kevin Durant's jump shot at the top and providing a point of attack for opposing options in 1A unlike the rest of the team?
Washington, who quickly moved into the starting lineup, poses the team's most pressing dilemma in the best possible sense. “Especially P.J., he's been great defensively the last four games,” Doncic said. In the postgame interview, he was asked if Thursday's game felt like playoff basketball, to which he replied: I've never been to the playoffs. '' In a follow-up question immediately after, he referenced his two appearances in play-in tournament games, admitting, “It certainly felt a little bit better than play-in basketball.''
What Washington brings to the Mavericks, while more experienced than a first-year center still learning the league, is much more of a mystery box than Gafford's recreation of Lively. (Agility would be more important against other opponents, but Gafford was the only one who played in the fourth quarter and would have been a traditional center option had the team moved him back into the game.) (later mentioned by Kidd.) He was drafted as a stretch four. While his abilities are not inconsistent, he represents something even more valuable in the modern NBA: what one of my colleagues recently dubbed the “combo wing.”
Washington has enough size to hold down offensive rebounds and is agile enough to attack closeouts. He did it often, even though he made only 2 of 6 shots from behind the arc in Thursday's game. More importantly, he can defend multiple positions, not only as the main opponent, but also as a helper on the help side. Dallas stuck to the same principles in the games after the trade deadline. But on Thursday, Dallas tried something new.
“We're looking at some new things defensively, and the guys have done a really good job with that,” Kidd said. “We're (rotating) around one person. That's what we're trying to do now, so we pick who we rotate and that one person always supports us. We just rotate around that person, the person we choose.”
It'll take more time to figure this out – we'll do it right away, and we'll get into the specifics of a team's zone principals and, in some cases, the actual zone defense more easily once we play a few more games. They could — but importantly, the team's coaching staff didn't feel they could implement these defensive nuances with the roster they had before the trade deadline. When asked if the team's new plans stemmed from the loan slot, Kidd replied, “Yeah, for sure.” And for Washington, he's a guy that's very important to the team's ability to shade help and rotate accordingly, and someone who agrees that this is what the team's roster is built on.
“This game is easy for us on the perimeter, just switching on and being aggressive and trying to force the ball to (shot blockers),” Washington said. “We make people take tough shots. I think we did a great job with that. Obviously we have a lot of guys who can switch and stay in front of the ball. So we're really good defensively. We're going to be a strong team.”
Importantly, Doncic's buy-in is also what makes this work a success. Offensively, the franchise talisman lacked for a mediocre night that would be unusual for literally anyone else: 41 points, 11 assists, nine rebounds, and just three turnovers. And again, when he plays with Irving, it works poetically. His co-star scored 29 points on 11-of-19 shooting. But despite the questions focusing on scoring highlights, Doncic's postgame interviews increasingly talk about his defensive efforts.
“This is not for me, it's for the team,” Doncic said. “My team needs that and that's what I do for the team. (And) honestly, I think today was good.”
Doncic is a potential MVP candidate and could be the frontrunner this season in other circumstances. He just helped lift the team to the No. 6 seed and was the team's lifeblood through an injury-plagued season that often sidelined his co-stars. But a lot of that will depend on his own commitment now that Irving is there and on a team that has the potential to actually defend in a way we haven't seen since the Doncic era. And like most of this season, he's responding.
There is still a lot left to prove, learn and know who this Mavericks team really is. Of course, the remaining 26 games of the season could very well prove how incomplete the Mavericks remain. Even if there are other reasons to blame, there's no need for bold declarations or definitive predictions just yet, especially given how uncertain the last four months of play have been. But at least be aware that this team, as it stands, demands it. And as those excuses about health and an incomplete roster finally fade away, it's up to this Mavericks team to prove that it's not in vain to ask for it.
(Photo: Glenn James/NBAE, Getty Images)
