The Dallas Mavericks (7-6) turned in a second straight pitiful performance on Saturday, dropping a 127-117 decision to the Cleveland Cavaliers (7-7) at Rocket Arena.Kyrie Irving led all scorers with 34 points on seven made 3-pointers, but no one rode shotgun with him as the Mavericks gave away a winnable game with a putrid second quarter.
Four of the five Cavaliers’ regular starters sat with injuries on the second night of a back-to-back set, after travel difficulties related to the temporary ground
stop at all U.S. airports beset the team coming back home from its game at the Miami Heat on Thursday. Various injuries were listed on the Cavs’ injury report, but the travel difficulties were what really tipped the scales of availability.
Saturday’s matchup appeared to offer Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving a get-right opportunity after an off night in Thursday’s 133-94 loss at the Minnesota Timberwolves. But that’s not what happened, of course. Let’s see what the numbers tell us.
9: Caleb Martin first-quarter points
An unlikely early scoring leader emerged for the Mavericks against the Cavs on Saturday. Caleb Martin paced Dallas with nine points through the first quarter on 4-of-4 shooting, including his only 3-point attempt of the opening frame.
Martin got into the passing lane on a bad pass from Thomas Bryant with 2:25 left in the first, and ran ahead for a dunk to put the Mavs in front, 22-20. He scored his first seven points in the first 4:35 of the game.
But as you may suspect, Martin’s emergence as the team’s leading scorer early on was not necessarily a harbinger of good things to come for Dallas. After battling to a 33-33 tie at the end of one with an injury-riddled version of the Cavaliers, Dallas started to wobble even more in the second.
38-20: Cleveland’s second-quarter ass kicking
The Dallas defense was nonexistent in the second quarter, and things weren’t going much better on the offensive end either. The Mavericks surrendered 38 points to a beleaguered Cavaliers team featuring big performances from the likes of Bryant (14 points, six rebounds in first half), rookie second-rounder Meleek Thomas (13 first-half points, 3-of-6 from 3-point range) and Tyrese Proctor (13 and six).
Meanwhile, Flagg and Irving combined to shoot 4-of-18 in the first half, scoring just 14 points between them. That continued a disturbing trend from Thursday’s lopsided loss at the Minnesota Timberwolves, when the duo scored just 22 points between them.
The Cavs turned a 33-33 tie after one quarter into a rout by shooting better than 56% from the field in the first half and took a gaudy 71-53 lead into the halftime break.
4: Third-quarter 3-pointers from Kyrie Irving
The Mavericks needed someone to step up in the worst way if they were going to trim the Cleveland lead to somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 points going into the fourth quarter. Enter Irving, finally.
He made 7-of-10 from the field, including 4-of-8 from 3-point land out of halftime as the Mavericks made two separate runs at the Cavs’ lead in the third. His third of the third pulled the Mavs to within 95-83 with 2:46 left in the frame. He hit a 28-footer less than a minute later to make it 97-88, giving Irving 17 points in the quarter, but the no-name Cavs had an answer every time.
Mario Hezonja, apparently playing the role of Croatian Kobe Bryant, scored 12 of his own in the third on a pair of made 3-pointers for Cleveland. After the dust settled in a back-and-forth third quarter, the Mavs were still down by 14, 105-91 as the fourth quarter loomed.
What made the frame frustrating is how little the Mavericks’ role players did to help Irving out as he single-handedly tried to bring Dallas back. Martin, PJ Washington, Morez Johnson Jr., Zaccharie Risacher and Santi Aldama all combined to score four points on a combined 2-of-7 from the field in the third. Irving scored 20 of his team-high XX in the third before the Mavericks faded into the Cleveland night down the stretch.
11-of-31: Cooper Flagg shooting in last two losses
Flagg was nonexistent on both ends of the floor against the Cavs, as he made just six field goals on offense, and got burned time and time again on defense while trying to stay in front of someone named Tyrese Proctor off ball screens. Flagg made just 5-of-12 from the field in limited action on Thursday in the blowout loss at Minnesota.
Proctor has, for most of the early part of the year, been a 20-minute-off-the-bench kind of guy. Against the Mavs on Saturday, he set career-high marks in points, rebounds, and assists on his way to the first triple-double of his career. Proctor burned everyone the Mavs sent at him on Saturday, finishing with 24 points on 10-of-19 shooting, 11 rebounds and 10 assists in the unlikely Cleveland win.
