3 things to watch as the Mavericks meet the Raptors

SB Nation

The Dallas Mavericks (0-2) will face the Toronto Raptors (1-1) Sunday for a 6:30pm CST tipoff at American Airlines Center. The Mavericks enter the midpoint of their season opening five-game homestand in search

of their first win against a Raptors team bent on defying expectations.

The Raptors arrive on the heels of a closely contended 122-116 home loss to the Milwaukee Bucks Friday, two nights after they took apart Atlanta on the road Wednesday in a 138-118 rout. Dallas will attempt to end a two-game skid, having dropped Wednesday’s debut against the Spurs, 125-92, and Friday’s game against Washington, 117-107.

For the Raptors, guard Ja’Kobe Walter (illness) and forward Collin Murray-Boyles (forearm muscle strain) have missed Toronto’s first two games. Walter is expected to be available and Murray-Boyles is questionable. For the Mavericks, guard Dante Exum (knee) and center Daniel Gafford (ankle) are both questionable, and guard Kyrie Irving (knee) is out.

The difference maker

This Raptors team brings back last year’s starting core of wings RJ Barrett and Scottie Barnes, guard Immanuel Quickley, and center Jakob Poeltl for a second try after injuries dashed the team’s 2024-25 plans and several bench players took a couple of steps up on the depth chart for months. This year the club is joined on the court by a kindred spirit looking to shake bad injury luck in Brandon Ingram, one of the game’s most elegant scorers who before his Raptors debut Wednesday had last played when an ankle injury sidelined him as a Pelican in December 2024. Ingram, brought to Toronto in a February trade, has already made an impact in his two games with the team, averaging 22.5 points. One other sign of Ingram’s impact could be the outstanding play of Barrett, who has matched Ingram’s season scoring output but has done it with 9-of-12 shooting performances in each of the Raptors’ two games.

Game of Risks

Defensively the Raptors take on the intensity of reserve guard Jamal Shead, pressed into a starting role for much of last year. They pick up the ballcarrier immediately at midcourt, looking to disrupt opposing offenses and shorten the shot clock. At first glance that sounds like trouble for the turnover-prone Mavericks, who have started their two games without a traditional point guard, opting to max out on their greatest advantage, size, with Anthony Davis, Cooper Flagg, PJ Washington, Dereck Lively II, and Klay Thompson, and who struggled against a pesky Washington team Friday.

Toronto doesn’t have a lot of size, with only one other center, the skilled shooting big man Sandro Mamukelashvili, to spell Poeltl. What the team does have is length, they cracked the game open against the Hawks with a small lineup on the floor that energized its offense with defense, generating turnovers and bad shots. The Raptors always seemed to have someone ahead of the break when they would gain possession. In transition, alert passers like Barrett and Barnes look upcourt to advance the ball fast with little dribbling. While this group was one of the best versions of itself against the Hawks, Milwaukee shed some light on the limits of an undersized lineup, no matter how aggressive. Friday the Raptors were effective in limiting Myles Turner and Bobby Portis to 7 of 21 shooting, but it took a lot of running around to keep up with the Bucks’ size and the Raptors weren’t in position when the ball would get back out to Cole Anthony or AJ Green, who made them pay from the three-point line.

Of course, that can go the other way too. The Mavericks found every way to give the ball away Friday, from a charge just inside the arc to repeated carelessness with the rock. They will have to be more careful against this Raptors team. Another aspect of the Mavericks that makes them hard to predict is that for all their size, the Wizards blocked eight Maverick shots and the Spurs’ five team blocks does not illustrate the degree to which Victor Wembanyama controlled the rim.

Already home, might as well go big

The availability of Gafford will shape the lineups that head coach Jason Kidd puts on the floor, as the wheels fell off when the team was astoundingly bitten by a lack of center depth against the Spurs as foul trouble plagued Lively and Davis. For all the attention given to Kidd’s unconventional approach to starting point guard this season, the team has experienced its greatest successes this season in the first quarters of games with the big lineup. The Wizards staged a double-digit comeback and built a double-digit lead with a succession of Maverick point guards on the floor in the game’s middle quarters. The Spurs built their lead in the second half as the Mavericks put three guards on the floor to stimulate scoring. If Dallas can scrape up enough three-point shooting from Washington, Thompson, and Max Christie to help the bigs, it has the means to exploit Toronto’s greatest vulnerability.

The Road Ahead

The NBA Champion Oklahoma City Thunder come to town Monday for a 7:30pm tip. The Mavericks won last year’s season series against the Thunder, 3-1. The Indiana Pacers will close out the homestand Wednesday, then the Mavericks hit the road to meet the Detroit Pistons Friday.