The Mavericks should be getting used to playing without much recovery time between games.
This will be their third set of back-to-back games in the past two weeks.
The good news is they are 2-0 on the second night of those situations with both of the wins coming on the road (at Orlando and Washington).
The degree of difficulty goes up Sunday evening when the Mavericks play the Sacramento Kings at American Airlines Center.
It’s a 6:30 p.m. tipoff, which means that the Mavericks are losing an hour off of their usual rest time for a 7:30 p.m. start.
As Luka Dončić said when he was leaving his interview session after Saturday’s 132-125 loss in Milwaukee, the Mavericks should talk to the NBA about making it a 7:30 start.
If only it were that easy.
But at least the Mavericks had two days off on Thursday and Friday, which turned this into a four-games-in-six-days proposition. Coach Jason Kidd played in a different era.
“Four in five (nights), they don’t even know what that is,” he said of today’s players. “A lot of times, we didn’t know where we were. It was a man’s game. You came to the paint, you got hit. They didn’t care if you were 19 or 20 years old. You couldn’t be soft. You had to earn your stripes. The keys weren’t given to you, you had to earn them.”
Ah, but that was then and this is now. And in this era, four games in six days counts as a challenging stretch, especially when the fourth game is against Sacramento, which is coming off a win in San Antonio on Wednesday.
Here’s what else to look for when the Mavericks meet the Kings for the first time this season:
SACRAMENTO KINGS (7-4) at MAVERICKS (9-4)
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