Clippers Overwhelm Mavs - X's and Owens

I’m not mad. Up until this point in my NBA bubble viewing experience, I have not had any fun while watching a Mavericks game. Against the Suns, Kings, and to an extent the Rockets the Mavs as a whole looked sluggish and a step slow. Our shots were not falling as they used to, our defensive rotations were hard to watch, and our bench was not playing at the level that they were during the non-bubble portion of the season. During some seriously dark times since the season restarted, I had convinced myself that we were just not good, I had given up any hope that we would compete during the playoffs or have any success in the future with our current roster. Although we lost, although we somehow let Ivica Zubac go 10/10 from the field with 15 rebounds, and although Tim Hardaway still seems to have forgotten how to shoot a basketball, This game made me very happy about our chances come playoffs and the rest of the seeding games.

Kristaps has been a bright spot for the Mavs, showing flashes of aggressive plays that we haven’t seen from him since his time in New York. Tonight he showed that he can still show out and perform at a high level with his co-star Luka Doncic in the game as they combined for 59 points. Luka’s three ball looked strong, going 6-13 from deep (some attempts were late game toss ups), a definite improvement from the first three seeding games in which he went 3/18. Maxi Kleber came off the bench and brought a somewhat efficient 10 points and played great on ball defense on whichever tough matchups Coach Carlisle threw at him. I love that Trey Burke got some league wide attention for his performance against the Rockets, However, we know that those all star level performances will not be consistent, so I do not understand why he is taking 15 shots while going 0/7 from three point land. We need him in the role of coming off the bench when Luka needs a break, and having an efficient 5-8 shots per game. As a team we seemed to have more energy on the floor as we took the Clippers through a competitive four quarters with 12 lead changes, that simply got away from the Mavs in the Fourth.

At this point in the seeding games we are shaping up to have a first round playoff matchup against the Los Angeles Clippers. Simply off what I just saw from this game I have faith in the Mavericks taking the Clips to a competitive 6 game series. Obviously we much prefer a much more winnable Nuggets matchup, but it doesn’t look like we will be that lucky. If the mavs can continue to build on their performance from tonight in the next 4 seeding games, I hope that we will be ready for this dangerous Clippers team come playoffs. I am excited to see how Luka and Kristaps fare in the playoffs, it will be an important experience for this young core to our team for the future no matter the outcome.

This Saturday we face a hopefully complacent Milwaukee Bucks team. Having already secured the 1 seed in the east, I am hoping that the Bucks will be resting their stars so that the mavs can get some more reps in to work out the wrinkles before we start playoffs. Even though it does nothing for the standings, a win against Milwaukee will be big for the Mavs when it comes to confidence. We definitely need to get Tim Hardaway back to playing his best basketball, and hopefully Seth Curry will be slotted back into the lineup after missing the past two games so that he can get his shot going. These final seeding games are essential in getting ready for starting strong come playoffs, we must take them seriously and we must get back to playing our best basketball.