Rick Carlisle has a reputation as a coach who can push the right buttons. On Wednesday night, he had a player do it for him.
During a timeout in the second quarter of the Mavs’ game against the Philadelphia 76ers, Carlisle picked up a dry-erase board and drew a circle with the word “reset” inside of it. He told Seth Curry to push it.
The Mavericks were up 42-41 at the time, with 4:40 left to go in the half. They’d build a seven-point lead within a couple minutes, and by the end of the third quarter they were up 12 points. Dallas would go on to win 113-95.
Why Curry? Before he finished with a 22-point, six-assist, four-steal stat line, Carlisle said the first-year Maverick had a start that was “very much below his standards.”
“I made a couple bad turnovers and took a couple gambles defensively,” Curry admitted. “I just had to get my mind right and just get into the game. That was just a funny thing he did in the timeout that got me going a little bit.”
Unlike in a game of NBA 2K, the Mavs’ reset could not undo what had already transpired in the game. But Harrison Barnes said it turned out to be a symbolic respite in the middle of a helter-skelter kind of game.
“We just needed a chance to take a breath, and just breathe,” Barnes said. “We were just getting a little frantic. I thought that was a good moment for us to change and move forward.”
After hitting the reset button, that happened.
“It was funny,” Curry said with a grin. “It was a cute little tactic he used.”
Players and coaches throughout the locker room used the familiar term “trap game” to describe the contest. The Mavs had been coming off two wins in as many days against the Spurs and Cavaliers, and while the Sixers had won 10 of their last 15 games, the third contest didn’t necessarily carry the same weight as the first two. Still, Carlisle warned that Philadelphia is perhaps the hardest-playing team in the league, and he’s absolutely right. The 76ers get in your face on defense and play some very unique offense that stretches teams to the limit unless they play with a high motor.
Wesley Matthews, the most intense voice in the Dallas locker room, didn’t see the game in that light, though.
“This was one of those trap games, but I don’t really see it as a trap game because we have the same record, or similar,” Matthews said bluntly. “We needed it, and we knew that they were gonna play hard. They’ve been playing extremely well. But we needed it, and we went and got it.”
To the Mavs’ credit, they did go get it. Salah Mejri almost single-handedly launched the run by playing his best game as a pro, finishing with 16 points and 17 rebounds off the bench. Curry heated up, Barnes finished the second quarter strong, and everything generally clicked for the Mavericks, now winners of three straight games for the second time this season and are now just 2.5 games out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
“I think we’re just responding, period,” Matthews said. “It’s hard. This kind of season is tough, with the injuries we’ve had, with the strength of schedule we had to start the season out, with the let-downs, the bad losses. I think we’re starting to hit a groove as a unit, coaching staff, and everybody. We have to adapt to a new style of play. We’ve done that, and we’re starting to see the benefits of it, and it’s paying dividends. Getting that confidence back, a little bit of swagger back — even in the games that we dropped, Miami and Utah, we know we should have had those. And we made them back, getting San Antonio and Cleveland. We’re playing how we feel we should be playing. We’re playing with an edge.”
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