Showing posts with label Mavs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mavs. Show all posts
Tuesday, 14 July 2026
Tuesday, 31 March 2026
Saturday, 14 March 2026
Thursday, 20 November 2025
Wednesday, 16 April 2025
MAVS GM HAS 'NO REGRETS' ABOUT LUKA DONCIC TRADE: 'DEFENCE WINS CHAMPIONS'
Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison has mostly been unavailable to the media since trading superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, but on Tuesday, he opened himself up to some questions — at least, to a select group of Dallas media, in a conference where there were no cameras present.
In that conference, Harrison reiterated that he has "no regrets" about trading Doncic, and that "defense wins championships," per ESPN.
Harrison used past unpopular trades that worked out as a defense of his moving Doncic for Anthony Davis, a deal which not only caused Mavericks fans to grow angry at the team in a way that the Kyrie Irving and Daniel Gafford trades did not, but is so much obviously worse given Doncic was a star who helped lead the Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2024.
Defense wins championships, but not on its own: ask the team that defeated the Mavericks in the Finals a year ago about that, considering their league-high offensive rating of 123.2 in 2023-2024. Defense was vital to that team, as well, but it was paired with a dynamic offense — the kind of dynamic offense that Doncic is capable of generating, especially when paired alongside a player like Irving.
The two are now split up, however, with Doncic scoring 28.2 points per game for the Lakers over 28 games, shooting 38% on 3s and contributing over eight rebounds and 7.5 assists per game to that mix. The Mavs have gone 13-20 after trading Doncic while they were still 26-23 — that initial record was disappointing, yes, but not a lost cause even in the competitive Western Conference, given the duo of Doncic and Irving.
After dealing Doncic, though, Irving then suffered a torn ACL and the end of his own season, and Davis — who played 36, 40, 56, and 76 games over the previous four seasons — has appeared in all of nine games for the Mavs due to his own injuries since the trade. In Harrison's defense, losing Doncic wasn't the only problem, but considering that Davis was the centerpiece of the return, it's not like the GM is fully absolved or dealing with some bad luck here, either.
The Lakers have gone 22-13 in the same stretch, minus one Davis and plus one Doncic, which allowed them to finish with 50 wins and a third-place finish in the West. The Mavericks get a chance to stick around through the play-in tournament, since their skid dropped them to 10th in the West, but it will be very difficult for them to do something with their unfortunate seeding this season if they are to make it out of that tournament, unlike a year ago when they were fifth but with their own 50-win season, and pushed through to the Finals, anyway … which the presence of an explosive player like Doncic on the roster allowed them to do.
Harrison explained that the lack of regrets is due to how unpopular moves come with the territory. "That's my job and I have to stand by it." It's understandable, given that the Mavs might very well make it into the playoffs and the season is ongoing for them, that Harrison would refuse to express regret just yet. However, Mavericks fans are likely hoping that this is all that this attitude is, and not Harrison truly believing that, in the end, shipping Doncic off was no more than an unpopular trade.
- FOX Sports
Wednesday, 11 December 2024
Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Saturday, 15 June 2024
LUKA DONCIC, MAVS AVART SWEEP WITH GAME 4 BLOWOUT
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| USA TODAY Sports |
DALLAS -- Luka Doncic scored 25 of his 29 points in the first half, Kyrie Irving added 21 points and the Dallas Mavericks avoided a sweep with a 122-84 rout of the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday.
The series shifts back to Boston for Game 5 on Monday as the Celtics will look to close it out at home. However, Dallas showed life in extending the series after Boston was the dominant team while winning the first three games of the best-of-seven series.
The script flipped in Game 4. Doncic and the Mavericks got off to a fast start and didn't look back. Doncic started a 10-0 spurt in the first quarter with a floater and closed it with a driving layup as Dallas took a 25-14 lead with 3:19 left in the period. That early run was a sign of things to come.
Dallas had a 34-21 lead by the end of the first quarter, scoring the final six points on 3-pointers by Irving and P.J. Washington.
The Mavericks kept pouring it on. They doubled up the Celtics 50-25 on a layup by Irving at the 5:16 mark of the second quarter. To close the half, Maxi Kleber drilled a corner 3-pointer off an assist by Doncic. That gave Dallas a 61-35 lead at the break.
The Mavericks shot 52.3 percent from the field compared to the Celtics' 29.7 percent in the opening half. Dallas also won the rebounding battle 29-13 over the opening 24 minutes.
Dallas turned it into a full-on rout in the second half, leading by as many as 48, taking a 115-67 lead on a 3-pointer by Jaden Hardy with 5:58 left in the game.
The Mavericks reached the 100-point mark several minutes before that on a 3-pointer by Tim Hardaway Jr. Dallas didn't reach the 100-point mark in any of the first three games against Boston.
Hardaway finished with 15 points on 5-of-7 shooting from 3-point range.
For Boston, it was a letdown for a team that remains in control of the Finals. NBA teams are 156-0 when taking a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series.
The Celtics were led by Jayson Tatum's 15 points. Sam Hauser added 14 points, and Payton Pritchard had 11.
--Drew Davison, Field Level Media
Thursday, 13 June 2024
Monday, 10 June 2024
Friday, 31 May 2024
DONCIC'S 36 POINTS SPUR MAVERICKS TO NBA FINALS WITH 124-103 TOPPING OF TIMBERWOLVES
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| AP Photo |
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Luka Doncic was in his element, hitting shots from everywhere on the court, hushing the crowd and flashing those sly smiles as the Dallas Mavericks delivered a knockout performance.
Now one of the global sport's young superstars gets his first trip to the NBA Finals.
Doncic had a 20-point first quarter on his way to 36 points for his high this postseason, and the Mavericks beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 124-103 on Thursday night to breeze through the Western Conference finals in five games.
“He let his teammates know that it’s time and they’ve got to take it up a notch,” coach Jason Kidd said. “He sent the invites out, and they all came.”
Kyrie Irving also scored 36 points for the Mavericks, who built a 29-point halftime lead on 61% shooting to deflate the once-energized crowd before most fans got up for their first snack break. The Mavs went up by 36 in the third quarter, consistently keeping the Timberwolves offense all out of whack.
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| AP Photo |
“I just had that utmost confidence when I was going to sleep last night and went to shootaround this morning," Irving said, “just feeling like we were going to play one of our best games.”
The Mavs, the No. 5 seed in the West, have a full week to rest before the NBA Finals begin in Boston on June 6 for the franchise's first appearance since winning the championship in 2011 when Kidd was playing for them. The Celtics will have had 10 days between games after sweeping Indiana in the Eastern Conference finals.
Anthony Edwards scored 28 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 28 points and 12 rebounds for the third-seeded Wolves, who met their match with the defense-smashing duo of Doncic and Irving after stifling Phoenix in a first-round sweep and then dethroning defending champion Denver in a seven-game series.
“We never clicked all together as a team in this series, not even one game,” Edwards said. “The last two series, we were all clicking at one time, making shots and stuff. It wasn’t clicking at one time here.”
Irving improved to 15-1 in his career in closeout games in the playoffs.
Doncic set a defiant tone by starting 4 for 4, hitting rainbows from 28 and 31 feet as he turned to talk trash to the courtside fans with each swish.
“That gets me going," Doncic said. "Everybody knows that by now.”
He drained a 32-footer later in a first quarter as the Mavs closed on a 17-1 spurt, a run they pushed to 28-5 over a nine-minute stretch.
“I thought I set a good-enough screen, and I turned around and he's shooting from half court,” center Daniel Gafford said.
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| AP Photo |
This was Doncic’s second 20-point quarter in his postseason career, following a 21-point fourth quarter in the Western Conference finals loss to Golden State in 2022. He was voted the MVP of the series.
Doncic, who shot 14 for 22 and grabbed 10 rebounds, and his savvy sidekick Irving, who has a championship ring from 2016 with Cleveland, were the superior stars in the series as this Wolves team found its first taste of a sustained postseason run to be a bitter — but perhaps ultimately beneficial — one.
“You can’t skip any steps. The West is going to be a monster next year as it continues to be every year. There was a lot of things we did well this year,” Wolvers coach Chris Finch said. “I’m super proud of our guys. Just building another layer of foundation to try to get where we want to go.”
Though he familiarly and persistently waved his arms at the officials almost every time a whistle didn’t go his way, the 25-year-old Doncic played with an unshakeable confidence and unflappable joy from start to finish. As he was taunted by the fans with a “Flopper!” chant when he shot free throws in the third quarter, Doncic smiled and mockingly mouthed the words along with them.
The Mavs got 7-foot-1 rookie Dereck Lively II back from the sprained neck that kept him out of the previous game, restoring the complete rim protection duo with Gafford that helped them disrupt Rudy Gobert in the post and just about everyone else who tried to attack the basket. Gafford had 11 points and nine rebounds, and Lively added nine points and eight rebounds.
Edwards, though he hit the 25-point mark for the 15th time in 27 career playoff games, had trouble finding his rhythm amid all the double-teams. The Wolves, for all their progress this season, were reminded they don’t yet have a championship offense despite his dynamic skills and clutch mentality.
They had several wince-inducing possessions in the decisive first half, with the coaches struggling to find a group that could play in sync together.
As the final seconds of the second quarter ticked away, Edwards drove to the lane and kicked the ball to the corner to Kyle Anderson, who swung it back to Towns on the wing and failed to find a look he liked. He passed back to Anderson, who tried to move closer and had the shot clock expire on him.
P.J. Washington, who had 12 points, flexed his arms in celebration of yet another stifling defensive sequence by the Mavs.
“They won the series. They earned the series. They deserve the series. Congrats to them and their entire staff. They were led by two world-class players that played at a world-class level,” Finch said.
- DAVE CAMPBELL
Thursday, 30 May 2024
Thursday, 23 May 2024
Thursday, 16 May 2024
Thursday, 11 April 2024
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