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After being down early, the Dallas Mavericks fought hard to get back into the game against the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night and put themselves in a great position to win the game.
Late in the fourth quarter, with the Mavericks down 109-107, Dallas’ Trey Burke missed a three, and after a Willie Cauley-Stein offensive rebound, Kristaps Porzingis had a good look at a three but missed it. Ultimately, the Bucks secured the rebound and would go on to defeat Dallas at home 112-109.
After Porzingis’ miss, Luka Doncic, who played well on Friday and had 28 points, 13 rebounds, and nine assists, angrily motioned to the bench that the team should have taken a timeout in that sequence. However, Carlisle disagreed.
“Look, we got two good shots, and we preserved a timeout,” Carlisle said after the game. “As a coach, that’s all you can hope for in that situation.”
After further review, Carlisle was right. Dallas got two good looks in that sequence and had the Bucks’ defense scrambling. Maybe the 21-year-old Doncic thought he should have had the ball in his hands, which is hard to argue against, but Porzingis is a good shooter and had a good look.
This is all apart of Doncic’s development as a leader. Like many great players, he wants to take and make big shots, but as a leader, at some point, you have to move on, and it appeared Doncic stayed on the lack of timeout, maybe a little too long in that situation. After the game, Doncic said he did not talk to Carlisle about the timeout and said the following:
“If we talk, we’re going to talk, it’s not going to be in the media. It’s between us.”
In the end, it’s early in the season, so in the grand scheme of things, this situation probably won’t matter going forward.
Watch Doncic talk that final sequence below:
