In an NBA season, there are highs and lows, ups and downs, and right now, the Dallas Mavericks are down. Dallas(8-13) has now lost six straight after losing to the Suns(11-8) at home 109-108 on Monday night.
Phoenix defeated the Mavericks on Saturday night and swept the two-game set against Dallas.
Dallas led late but fell victim to Devin Booker’s greatness, who hit a three with 1.5 seconds left to give Phoenix the victory. Dallas had one last chance, but Luka Doncic missed a three at the buzzer.
The Mavericks are looking to get back on track, but according to their coach Rick Carlisle, the team is making progress. However, they have more work to do.
“We’re not back on track,” Carlisle said. “We’re still making mistakes, but we’re making progress with chemistry. We’re going to be positive. When we show stuff to guys, generally, my rule is we’re showing two-thirds positive and one-third correction. That’s the way I like to do it. I like to be more on the positive side. I’m not saying there’s any moral victories here or any of that nonsense —there’s not, there’s not. This is a binary thing; it’s wins and losses. We’ve got to do better.”
For the first time this season, Dallas had a full roster as Maxi Kleber returned after being out due to health and safety protocols, so that’s a positive for this team. Luka Doncic, who led the team with 25 points, believes Dallas has to stick together.
“It is tough, but there is always another game coming,” Doncic said. “We have to stay positive. There is where we can see who we are in these tough moments. We are staying together. I think in the last two games, we were way better than before, and this is where good teams come together.”
While Dallas has been hit hard by health and safety protocols, Kirstaps Porzingism, who had 19 points and 10 rebounds against the Suns on Tuesday night, believes Dallas can’t blame their struggles on that situation.
“We are not the only team that has had some guys out, so we can’t really blame it on that,” Porzingis said. “Of course, we would like to have everybody from the first game, but the situation is what it is. I can’t really put a number on it and say after this many games; we are going to be playing well; it is a day-to-day thing. We are looking forward to getting better, and once you get a win, it eases up, and things happen more naturally, so that is what we are looking forward to.”
Dallas has the talent and played well in these two games against the Suns, but they could not get it done down the stretch. After they travel to Atlanta to play the Hawks on Wednesday, Dallas has a seven-game homestand. While they won’t have fans, they won’t have to travel, so maybe this will be their chance to turn it around.
Notes:
• Booker hit a game-winning 3-pointer with 1.5 seconds remaining to give Phoenix the win. Booker finished with 24 points and shot 4-8 from deep. Booker made his return on Monday after missing four games due to a left hamstring strain.
• Chris Paul led Phoenix with 34 points, 9 rebounds and 9 assists on 14-20 shooting in 38 minutes tonight. His 34 points are the most by Paul in a regular season game since the 2017-18 season, when he scored 38 at New Orleans on 1/26/18. His 9 boards ties a season-high, marking the third time this season he has collected 9 rebounds.
After their 109-104 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves(5-14) on Sunday night, the Cavaliers(9-11) have now lost two straight. Fortunately for Cavs, they get a chance to get right back at it on Monday, but this time, the game is in Cleveland.
Unfortunately for Cleveland, they will be without their two best frontcourt players in Andre Drummond(back) and Larry Nance Jr.(wrist). Drummond had a 20-20 game on Sunday night against Minnesota with 25 points and 22 rebounds. Nance Jr., who finished with two points on Sunday night, was clearly hampered by his wrist injury, so it’s no surprise that he will miss Monday night’s game.
Against Minnesota on Sunday night, Cleveland struggled with turnovers. They had 19 turnovers, which led to 29 points for the Timberwolves.
Cavs point guard Darius Garland had four of the team’s 19 turnovers, and he believes that the turnovers cost his team the game.
“Turnovers,” Garland said about why the team lost to Minnesota. “We beat ourselves. That’s it.”
Minnesota had 16 threes, including three by D’Angelo Russell(5 threes in total) in the fourth quarter. Malik Beasley(five threes) and Anthony Edwards(five threes) led the way for the Timberwolves with 23 points apiece.
Cleveland is a young team, so they will have moments, times, and situations, where they will struggle, but they play hard and are well-coached, so expect them to bounce back on Monday night as they begin a four-game homestand.
During the Spurs’ three-game winning streak, San Antonio came up big on the defensive end, but on Saturday night against the Grizzlies, the defense came up small.
San Antonio, who allow 111.3 points per game and 47% from the field, let the Grizzlies score 129 points and shoot 56% from the field, and the Grizzlies shot 48.6 percent (17-35) from three-point range for 51 points, the second-most the Spurs have allowed this season from beyond the arc. Ultimately, the Spurs would fall to Memphis 129-112 at AT&T Center.
De’Anthony Melton scored 20 points, and Ja Morant added 19 points and 11 assists for the Grizzlies. Memphis is on a six-game winning streak and played their first game since January 20 due to health and safety protocols.
After the game, Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich said maybe the team playing on Friday night impacted their performance.
“Everybody plays back-to-backs and three and four nights, and it probably showed a little bit on us, but everybody goes through it,” Popovich said. “You just have to play. We got outplayed tonight. That’s the bottom line.
While they lost, some good news came from this game for the Spurs. Derrick White returned after missing 14 games due to a toe injury, and in 22 minutes off the bench, White led the Spurs with 18 points.
“I’m feeling good,” White said. “I don’t have a broken toe this time, so that’s cool, but I feel good. Just trying to get my legs underneath me. Feel like I haven’t played in a while, so just trying to get my legs back underneath me and do whatever it takes to help us compete. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
Popovich added on White: “I thought he did very, very well for having been gone so long.”
The beauty of the 2020-21 NBA schedule is the two-game sets, and for the Spurs, they have an opportunity to get back at it against the Grizzlies on Monday night and correct whatever they did wrong.
The effort was better, but the result was still the same for the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas would fall to the Phoenix Suns at home 111-105 on Saturday night. Dallas has now lost five straight and eight out of their last ten.
On Friday after Dallas’ loss to the Jazz, Mavericks star Luka Doncic, who scored a team-high 29 points to go with eight rebounds and seven assists, including 18 points in the third quarter against Phoenix, questioned the team’s efforts, but on Saturday, Doncic was happy with how the team played.
“Way better,” Doncic said of the team’s effort. “I think everybody was a little tired. We came at like 4 a.m. yesterday. I think the effort was great today, and I think we had a little bad luck. We had like five or six open shots at the end, and they don’t fall. We got to work on that.”
Willie Cauley-Stein added: “I think our effort level was a 10 out of 10 tonight. Guys were fighting, and we’re in great positioning to help each other out. This is what this stretch is about. We’re bleeding right now, and we’re trying to stop the bleeding. I think our effort level, where our attitude and effort was today, was two steps in the right direction.”
Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle was disappointed in the loss, but like Doncic and Cauley-Stein, he was happy with the fight Dallas showed against the Suns.
“What a disappointing game,” Carlisle said. “We were fighting from the beginning and got behind, were able to get a lead, and then it was tied at halftime. Then in the third, we built a 15-point lead with six to go in the third, but we had some loose possessions, we had some poor defensive possessions, and they got the momentum back.
“It’s just a really disappointing one because of how hard our guys fought. But Phoenix hung in, and they made plays. They were able to do what they had to do to get the momentum back and win. We’ve just simply got to do better. I loved our attitude heading into the game. Just really disappointed for the team.”
Obviously, losing five consecutive games is not a good thing, but according to Tim Hardaway Jr., who finished with 19 points, four rebounds, and four assists on Saturday night, these struggles will help Dallas in the long run.
“Everything is happening for a reason,” Hardaway jr. said. “I feel like that in order for you to be great, you have to go through the trenches with your brothers and crawl and dig your way out of that hole. Tonight, I think we moved one step closer in the right direction. I am not saying it was great because we didn’t get the win, but at the same time, people showed effort [and] people were moving the ball. It felt like there was some joy out there today, and it was a great job from all of our guys that stepped in to show that.”
Dallas will battle the Suns on Monday night in the second game of their two-game set, and hopefully, they will have another solid effort.
Notes:
-Chris Paul led Phoenix with 29 points to go with a game-high 12 assists and 4 steals. This was Paul’s sixth double-double of the season and the 452nd of his career.
-Deandre Ayton left the game with a shoulder injury early on but eventually returned and contributed 18 points and a season-high-tying 17 rebounds for his 73rd career double-double.
-Dallas was without Kristaps Portzingis(Rest) on Saturday night.
The Mavericks(8-11) two-game set in Utah was not a fun experience for this team. Dallas was outscored 236-205 in the two games, including getting routed by the Jazz 120-101 on Friday night. With the loss, the Mavericks are now on a four-game losing streak.
Dallas scored only 12 points in the first quarter and trailed by 25 points after one. It was an uphill battle for the Mavericks from there, who got the lead down to 13 in the second quarter but could not get any closer than that.
Utah was still without their leading-scorer Donovan Mitchell, but they got a game-high 32 points from Bojan Bogdanovic and 22 points out of Mike Conley. Utah(15-4) is currently on an 11-game winning streak and has the best record in the NBA.
Luka Doncic led the Mavericks with a team-high 25 points, but he was not happy with the team’s effort after the game.
“Terrible,” Doncic said. “There’s really not much to say. I never felt like this. and we gotta do something because this is not looking good. We gotta step up and just talk to each other, play way better than this. It’s mostly effort…
“Right now, it’s looking like we don’t care, honestly, if we win games or not. More energy, more effort, dive for every ball, box out, everything. There’s a lot of things we can improve, and I know we will, and that’s all that matters there.”
The Mavericks are struggling right now, and maybe it’s effort, or it could be chemistry issues, as Kristaps Porzingis mentioned after Wednesday’s loss to the Jazz. Still, Friday’s loss was disappointing when you consider how poorly they played on Wednesday.
However, still a lot of basketball left and even a lot of time to fix what’s ailing this team. It does not get any easier as they host the Suns on Saturday night.
The San Antonio Spurs(11-8) are taking advantage of some home cooking right now. San Antonio is in the midst of a seven-game homestand and beat a very good Denver Nuggets(11-8) team last night 119-109.
San Antonio is 3-1 on this homestand.
DeMar DeRozan was the star of the game for the Spurs. DeRozan was 11/14 from the field with 30 points and 10 assists, and Dejounte Murray poured in 12 of his 26 points in the fourth quarter.
DeRozan played an efficient game on Friday night, and according to him, he just took what the defense gave him.
“I just go out there and play,” he said. “I don’t go out there and try to do too much. I try to treat it like it’s a chess game. Just go out there and take what they give me, play the right way, be aggressive, and never try to force anything. That’s just my mindset when I go out there and play.”
Nikola Jokic led Denver with a game-high 35 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists.
San Antonio led 87-86 going into the fourth quarter, and in that final period, the Spurs stepped up the defense. After a Jokic three that tied the game at 95 midway through the fourth, the Spurs went on a 24-14 run to finish the game.
Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich was happy with his team’s defense. According to Pop, defense leads to wins.
“They did a good job,” Pop said. “Denver is one of the toughest teams to guard. They have such great movement. They’re so well-coached. They’re consistent night after night in what they do, and we were able to show some darn good aggressiveness…
“We got some young kids setting the tone defensively. We’re more athletic in that regard, and I think as a whole, the group understands that no defense, no wins.”
DeRozan added about the defense: “Play with a lot of energy, scrambled. The guy was helping the next guy. Whenever we made a mistake, we were aggressive. We kind of set the tone.”
Defense wins championship, and in the last two games against Boston and Denver, San Antonio has played well on the defensive end in the fourth quarter, which is one reason they have won three straight games. They go for a fourth consecutive victory on Saturday night against Memphis.
The Cleveland Cavaliers(9-9) battled the New York Knicks(9-11) for the third and final time this season on Friday night, and for the first time, they traveled to New York to do it. But, the Knicks continued to have success against Cleveland and blew out the Cavaliers 102-81 at MSG to snap a three-game losing streak.
New York has beaten Cleveland for the second time in three games, and won the season series. Knicks rookie Immanuel Quickley was huge off the bench and scored a game-high 25 points, including 14 points in the fourth quarter.
Cavs PG Darius Garland, who led the team with 24 points on Friday night, was not happy with the team’s energy against the Knicks.
“We gotta watch the film from this game, and we have to come in with the attitude, ‘Like, we lost to the Knicks again,'” said Garland, “It’s really unacceptable on our part because we’re supposed to just bring all that energy and bring that force into the game. We just didn’t bring it today”
The Cavs were held to season-low 81 points, and according to Cavs head coach J.B Bickerstaff, they did not share the ball enough to succeed against the Knicks.
“We got to do a much better job of just passing the basketball to the open man,” Bickerstaff said. “It’s a simple thing. It’s a simple adjustment to be made, it’s an easy thing for us to fix.”
Garland added: “There was a lot of one-on-one tonight, including myself.”
Some might view this loss to the Knicks as a setback for Cleveland, while others, including Bickerstaff, believe it’s apart of the process of becoming a team.
“A team is not something that happens overnight,” he said. “Just because you throw a bunch of dudes in the locker room, it doesn’t make them a team, and we’re still working to become that. To have that cohesiveness, to have that trust. to have that understanding of each other in certain situations, and that comes through expErience.
“We gotta have these experiences in order to get to where we want to go. Again, it can be frustrating in the moment for all of us, but I think we need to understand that we have to be patient in order to get where we want to go.”
With such a young team, Cleveland will have moments like they had when they swept a two-game set against the Nets last week and have moments like they had on Friday night against the Knicks. However, as Bickerstaff said, it takes time for a group of players to become a team, and Cleveland still needs that time to become a team.
Cavaliers C Andre Drummond is playing at a very high level this season. In 17 games, Drummond is averaging a double-double of 18.9 PPG and an NBA-leading 14.7 RPG. The nine-year veteran continued his strong season on Wednesday night against his former team, the Detroit Pistons.
Against the Pistons, Drummond had 23 points, 16 rebounds, and 5 steals, while Collin Sexton scored a game-high 29 points as the Cavs defeated Detroit 122-107 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
Drummond was the first Cavalier to record a 20-plus points, 15+ rebounds, and 5-plus steals in a single game was Ron Harper in 1987. Drummond is also third in the NBA with 16 double-doubles.
Cleveland plays a very physical game of basketball on both ends of the court, and they scored 66 of their 122 points in the paint. According to Drummond, Cleveland wants to wear teams down.
“For our team, our main goal is to beat up teams as much as possible, to wear them down, and we did a good job of that tonight against Detroit,” Drummond said. “They tried to be physical with us, tried to make us uncomfortable. We stayed the course; we stayed to our gameplan. We allowed them to get a early run in the first half. We came back in the second half, regrouped, and played Cavalier basketball, and the results on the scoreboard showed it.”
It appears that an angry Drummond is a very good Drummond. That was on full display when he angrily dunked on Mason Plumlee late in the fourth quarter. After the game, Drummond was asked if he plays better when he is angry; he said the following:
“Yeah, to answer the question,” Drummond said. “I think for me I naturally play aggressive… I’ll figure a way to play that way throughout the rest of the game.”
Drummond, who has 28 steals this season, also revealed that he has a little wager going with his teammate, Larry Nance Jr., about who can get the most steals this season. Nance has 36 steals. In terms of per game average, Nance is leading the league at 2.3 SPG, while Drummond is averaging 1.6 SPG.
“It makes us better as a defensive team knowing that your two bigs are averaging two to three steals for the game,” Drummond said. “So, for us, it’s just a friendly wager, who can get the most steals per game. Right now, he’s beating me.”
Who will win? It all depends, but I’m putting my money on Nance.
There have been whispers around the league about Drummond’s future in Cleveland after they acquired Jarret Allen from Brooklyn. Drummond can become a free agent at season’s end. It’s clear that Allen is the future, but based on how well Drummond is playing, Cleveland could get some value for the two-time All-Star.
For now, the Cavaliers would love to see more of “Angry Andre.”
The San Antonio Spurs(10-8) have gotten some excellent wins against some superb team this season, including wins over the Lakers and Clippers. Those victories were on the road. On Wednesday night, San Antonio got their biggest home win of the season.
DeMar DeRozan led the way for the Spurs with 21 points, and LaMarcus Aldridge chipped in 20 points as the Spurs defeated the Celtics(10-7) 110-106 at AT&T Center. San Antonio(4-5 at home) has struggled at home this season, but they were up for the task against Boston.
The Spurs trailed Boston by five after one quarter but had a strong second quarter, led by Lonnie Walker IV, who scored 12 points in that second quarter and helped San Antonio take a 14-point lead at halftime. However, the Celtics came on strong in the third quarter. They outscored San Antonio by 16 points and grabbed a two-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich was happy not with the team’s play in the third quarter but was delighted with how they responded in the fourth.
“We kind of let up and coasted a little bit in the third quarter,” Popovich said. “They played very physically, and we didn’t respond. Turned it over, stopped moving. In the fourth quarter, we played solid D, and we attacked the rim pretty good for ourselves and teammates.”
One big defensive play was made by Spurs PG Dejounte Murray, who stripped Kemba Walker late in the fourth quarter, with the Spurs holding a two-point lead. Murray finished with a dunk to put San Antonio up four.
Keldon Johnson, who had 18 points and 10 rebounds against Boston, talked about Murray’s steal and finish.
“Big-time players make big-time plays,” Johnson said. “Like DeMar(DeRozan) hit a clutch shot, D.J.(Murray) made a clutch play. He came down and got a steal, and he went and dunked it.”
The Spurs have now beaten the Lakers, Clippers, and Celtics this season, three teams that are championship contenders. According to DeRozan, San Antonio is excited to take on the challenge of beating the better teams in the league.
“We go out there, especially against these big teams, and compete to the best of our abilities,” DeRozan said. “It’s fun for us. We take on the challenge. We go out there and put it out there on the line.”
Great win for the Spurs. As the season goes on, the Spurs appear to be getting more comfortable with each other. With the possibility of Derrick White(toe) returning this weekend, things could get only better in San Antonio.
It started badly for the Mavericks on Wednesday night against the Jazz, and it got progressively worse. Dallas never led in this game and trailed by 21 points at halftime and as much as 25 in the game. Ultimately, they would get routed on the road by Utah 116-104.
The Jazz, who won their 10th-straight game, were without their leading scorer Donovan Mitchell. However, Jordan Clarkson came off the bench to score a game-high 31 points, and Rudy Gobert added 29 points and 20 rebounds.
Dallas has now lost three straight, and according to Luka Doncic, who had a team-high 30 points against the Jazz, the Mavericks are not playing like themselves right now.
“There’s a lot of things wrong,” Doncic said. “We’re just not ourselves right now. We gotta pick it up and be way better than this… We just gotta play harder; that’s it. Just bring more energy and play hard.”
Dallas got a few of their key contributors back on Wednesday night. Dorian Finney-Smith, Josh Richardson, and Dwight Powell all returned after missing time due to health and safety protocols. Maxi Kleber is still on the list.
As guys return, Dallas will have to build chemistry, which Kristaps Porzingis said is an issue for this team.
“We don’t have that chemistry yet,” Porzingis said. “That we’re looking for. We don’t have our roles clear, I think. We’re just kind of out there playing, and we’re a talented group, but until we have everybody playing together and also have some time together off the court. I think we won’t really have that chemistry, so it’s just a rough night for us.”
With the COVID-19 restrictions, and players going in and out due to health and safety protocols, building chemistry could be an issue for many teams in the NBA this season, and the Mavericks are no different. But, they are going to have to find a way to get chemistry on the fly. It’s just that simple.
Dallas will get another crack at the Jazz on Friday night in the second game of their two-game set.
