DENVER — Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd didn’t wait until his next practice to address the worst loss of the season. He didn’t wait until the next shootaround. Instead, in space within a cramped locker room in the bowels of the Delta Center, Kidd and his staff and his players put it all on the table on Nov. 14.
The Mavericks had just lost to the Utah Jazz on this night, and done so in the most maddening way possible. In the second-to-last possession of a tie game, Dallas allowed an uncontested dunk for John Collins, a dunk which provided the final score. If you give up a game-winner, it has to be a contested shot, a shot that you can live with as a defense. Instead, the Mavericks lost a game because their defense fell asleep at the worst possible time. It was, at the time, their fourth consecutive defeat. It was a loss to a team that wasn’t really that interested in winning.
So, in their locker room after that game, they watched the film, every gory detail. And then they had a team meeting and talked about it, the players and the coaches.
“We talked about a lot of things, and got a lot of things out in the open,” Mavericks forward PJ Washington said. “But the main thing is that we knew we were better than that, and that we had to be better going forward.”
Fast-forward eight days and the team hasn’t lost since, now winning games that probably wouldn’t have been won before that team meeting. Take Friday night’s 123-120 win over the Denver Nuggets, for example, a wild NBA Cup road win before a packed house at Ball Arena. Without all-world guard Luka Dončić, Dallas built a 24-point second-half lead. Then, they gave it all back, and allowed the Nuggets to build their own five-point advantage down the stretch.
The earlier Dallas Mavericks would have caved. They would have hung their heads, and they wouldn’t have figured out a way to scratch out a victory. But even though we’re scarcely a week beyond rock bottom for the Mavericks, this is a team that’s closer. It’s a team that’s playing more for the group, instead of individually. And because of that, the group figured out a way to execute better than a Denver team that’s among the best in the league at executing down the stretch of a game.
“We wouldn’t have won this game 10 days ago,” Kidd said. “But this is a group of guys that’s reslient.”
The Utah loss served as a splash of cold water to the face, a shock to the system. It wasn’t the loss. It was how embarrassing the manner of the loss was. Social media torched Dallas for how wide open Collins was, doing so from multiple angles. Television zoomed in on Utah guard Jordan Clarkson’s eyes, as he looked at Collins in disbelief that Dončić had turned his back and left him alone under the basket.
When you lose, even in the rapid-fire schedule that is the NBA, you have to deal with at least a bit of blowback. But this wasn’t a regular loss. It was one that shouldn’t have happened. It was one where the Mavericks played lethargic basketball for much of the game and then kind of tried hard defensively for the last five minutes. And it was a loss that Dallas frankly deserved.
“In a way I’m kind of glad that it happened,” Washington said. “Because you never want to lose like that. We all knew that we were capable of doing a lot of things better. We needed to be accountable to each other. So, that’s why we kind of talked about it right after the game.”
Because of Dončić, because of Kyrie Irving, because of Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford and Washington, people thought the core of a Dallas team returning would mean a fast start to the season. After all. This is the same team that ran through the Western Conference playoffs last season, and advanced to the NBA Finals.
What people didn’t account for is that the Mavericks changed a lot, both at the core of the roster and around the margins. Klay Thompson was a new addition to the starting lineup. Naji Marshall and Quentin Grimes were both major additions to the rotation. Even though Jaden Hardy was a holdover from last season, he has taken a leap this season in minutes and responsibility. Even though Spencer Dinwiddie was once a Dallas Maverick, he came back to a significantly different team than the one he was on a few seasons ago.
In retrospect, maybe a slower start to the season should have been expected. When you have to integrate new parts to a team, guys have to figure out how to co-exist, and figure out where shots are coming from. The little things matter, and they all contributed to a 5-7 start to the year.
“In a lot of ways, we have a new team,” Lively said. “We have new players and were just starting to figure out tendencies. We’re learning each other and learning how to play together. That’s not going to happen overnight. But we knew we had to stop playing ‘I’ basketball and play more ‘we’ basketball, and that’s starting to happen.”
The current four-game winning streak has been impressive. There were blowout wins over the San Antonio Spurs and New Orleans Pelicans. There was Friday night’s win in Denver. But there was a road win over the Oklahoma City Thunder as well.
Both the wins in Denver and Oklahoma City came without Dončić, who is currently out after spraining his right wrist (Marshall led Dallas in scoring against Denver, with 26 points off the bench to counter 33 from Nikola Jokić). The Mavericks are moving the basketball. They are defending better and they are making shots. Dallas shot 50 percent from the field on Friday night. They made 10 of their 27 3-point attempts. They out-rebounded the Nuggets. They had 24 assists for their 46 made baskets, which signals how well and how democratically the ball is moving.
The Mavericks had been in Denver less than two weeks prior and lost a close game down the stretch. They took those lessons, along with the hurt from last week’s Jazz loss, and applied it to the rematch. And they came into Ball Arena a better team because of it.
“It says a lot about us,” Washington said. “We knew that we wanted to go out there and fight every possession. We’re a really good team. We have a lot of good players. When everyone is picking each other up and playing together, we’re tough to beat.”
(Top photo of Naji Marshall: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
