For 24 minutes on Wednesday night, the Dallas Mavericks looked like a team with more questions than answers. For the next 24 minutes, though, they looked like a team that had found a winning formula against the reigning Western Conference champs. Despite rallying back from being down 19 points in the second half to take a late three-point lead, the Mavs ultimately came up short in a 112-111 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on the road.
The second consecutive loss dropped Dallas to 4-4 on the season.
It’s also the Mavs’ second loss to San Antonio in less than two weeks, after the Spurs rolled to a 122-106 win in Dallas on Oct. 24 with Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving both sidelined.
This one had a different feel, though. Despite Victor Wembanyama going off for 52 points, 24 rebounds and eight blocks, the Mavs still had an opportunity to win the game at the end, but Irving’s last-second shot just wouldn’t drop. As encouraging as it was to see the Mavs not give up and fight back to make it a close game, nobody seemed happy to come away with any moral victories on Wednesday night.
“I feel like it’s a bad thing,” Naji Marshall said when asked what it meant to come back from 19 down. “I feel like we’re kind of telling ourselves and showing ourselves personally what we’re doing wrong. I feel like we’re letting ourselves down. Just practice what we preach. Go out there from the jump and play like [how we did in the second half]. Who knows how the game will turn out?”
Irving also spoke about the Mavs’ uninspiring first half. San Antonio put up 32 points in the first quarter and 36 more in the second, and Dallas spent most of that stretch, in his words, “playing on our heels.”
“We just got back to the identity that we’re trying to build for ourselves, which is, you know, it’s not so much desperation basketball, but it’s just playing to be the hunters,” Irving said. “… They were getting a lot of offensive rebounds, a lot of second chances. … The second half, I feel like we hit them and they had to respond, and that’s what got us back in the game.”
Instead of driving into Wembanyama at the rim, the Mavericks made a big adjustment and started kicking the ball out, re-spacing and letting it fly. Dallas ended up shooting 14-of-37 (37.8 percent) from deep.
“We stopped challenging Wemby at the rim, and started making better decisions with the basketball,” Mavs head coach Dusty May said.
This isn’t the first time the Mavericks have had to dig out of an early hole this season, and they know that’s a problem that needs to be addressed if they want to potentially be a playoff contender this year.
“To start off the game and, you know, give two quarters up, 32 and 36, that’s not where we want to be,” Irving said. “And when you’re giving up that amount of points in the first half, teams are going to be very comfortable and you got to work your way back. … I think we have to start trending in a direction where we’re going into halftime with a lead.”
The good news, though, is that the Mavericks now have proof of what that version of themselves looks like. May and the rest of the guys will now just have to figure out how to make it show up from the opening tip more consistently. Dallas will be in action again on Friday at American Airlines Center against the 1-7 Utah Jazz. The game will tip off at 7 p.m. CT. It will be the Mavs’ second NBA Cup game of the season. They won their first NBA Cup game against the Houston Rockets last week, improving to 1-0 in Group Play.
