NEW ORLEANS – The first half of the 2024-25 NBA season ended with a thud for the Dallas Mavericks.
A thud in a sense that in the NBA’s Last Two Minute Report which was released Thursday, the league admitted that goaltending should have been whistled against New Orleans forward Trey Murphy III when he “blocked” a Spencer Dinwiddie layup on Wednesday that had already touched the backboard. The basket would have given the Mavs a 118-117 lead over the Pelicans with five seconds left, and the NBA admitted the three referees missed that critical call which likely cost the Mavs the game.
Instead, the whistle never blew, the goaltending wasn’t called, and the Pelicans went on to win, 119-116. That, in a nutshell, pretty much sums up the rather odd things that happened to the Mavs in the first half of the season.
For instance, the Mavs regularly had so many players on the injury list that one would have thought they had stock in a hospital. In the first half of the season the Mavs lost a whopping 115 player games to injuries and illnesses.
Therefore, in finishing the first 41 games of this season with a 22-19 record — with so many games lost to injuries and illnesses — the Mavs haven’t yet been able to put their best foot forward.
“You can’t really give us a grade,” Dinwiddie said. “I know fans are probably up and down every game right now, but at the end of the day we have lofty goals when 
healthy. Injuries aren’t an excuse. You got to go out there and battle and fight and prepare, and you see guys step up every night in different roles every night, which is hard in of itself.
“But it’s an incomplete grade. Until you get healthy and figure out which nine (players) are going to be playing, what roles are they really going to have, string together 20 games, then you’ll know what you really have. We think we have something great. We don’t know.”
For the Mavs, the first half of the season is like going on a blind date. And not only did the blind date not show up, they got no phone call or text messages of their whereabouts.
They simply left the Mavs empty-handed. That’s how the slew of injuries and illnesses ravaged the Mavs in the first half of the season and prevented them from being among the NBA’s elite teams.
“Play has been really good,” coach Jason Kidd said. “Health has been poor, so you’ve got a next man up mentality.
“We’re putting ourselves in position to win games. When we’re healthy we truly believe we’re one of the best teams in the league.”
The Mavs are currently seventh in the Western Conference standings and would be in the play-in tournament if the season ended today. That’s not exactly where the defending West champions expected to be when they acquired Klay Thompson, Naji Marshall, Quentin Grimes and Dinwiddie last offseason.
However, those mitigating circumstances – injuries and illnesses – stymied the Mavs. In fact, since guard Dante Exum suffered an injury in training camp and eventually had surgery on his right wrist, the Mavs haven’t played a single game this season where they’ve been totally healthy.
And Exum notwithstanding, the Mavs’ best player – five-time All-Star point guard Luka Dončić – have been limited to just 22 games due to injuries. Also, the Mavs’ second-best player — guard Kyrie Irving — has missed 10 games.
Dereck Lively II and Naji Marshall have each missed nine games this season. Four of Marshall’s misses came from an NBA suspension for his involvement in a fracas with Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkic on Dec. 27.
On the second night of a back-to-back on Nov. 17, the Mavs did win at Oklahoma City, 121-119, without Dončić. They also won at Denver (123-120) on Nov. 22 without Dončić.
But the Mavs – they are 9-10 without Dončić this season – know they must have a healthy Dončić in order for them to reach their ultimate goal of winning the NBA title.
Things got so weird for the Mavs that this past Tuesday against Denver when Kyrie Irving returned to the lineup after missing five games with a lumbar back sprain, that’s the same game Lively suffered a right ankle sprain which forced him to miss Wednesday’s game against the Pelicans.
“I think we’ve got a good group of guys that continues to play no matter who’s on the floor,” forward P. J. Washington said. “I think that’s a positive.
“At the end of the day, obviously we know if our team was healthy through this first half of the season our record would be different. But at the end of the day, we can’t cry about it (and) we can’t be upset about it. We just got to learn from it, get better and just go out there and try to execute.”
The Mavs haven’t lacked motivation, even when they go to battle without all of their best players. They’ve used 18 different starting lineups this season and have kept on ticking.
“We always have motivation,” Dinwiddie said. “That’s the one, I think, great thing about this group and this coaching staff is we’re a team that’s pretty focused.
“We have a pretty good character level, maturity level, and we compete every night. We’re still above .500.”
And that’s the Mavs’ saving grace.
“We lost Exum very early in training camp (and) we lost Luka in training camp,” Kidd said. “Just understand that the guys that are playing are trying their best to put us in the win column, and we just come up short.
“There’s a lot of basketball to be played, and hopefully we’re heathy here in the second part of the season.”
Washington’s message to his teammates is to just keep pushing through the adversities, and good things will eventually come to those who patiently wait.
“We’re learning a lot about ourselves right now in this time,” Washington said. “It’s been a rough stretch for us.
“We can use this to get better. And obviously you would rather go through this now than at the end of the season. I think it’s all just building towards our goal and just getting the kinks and mistakes out now and just trying to learn each other as well.”
The Mavs are just 12-8 at home and surely don’t want to learn any more about how well they play or don’t play sans Dončić. They would like to shove that teaching tool into the closest closet and have it never to be brought back again.
Meanwhile, the Mavs look ahead – when they ultimately can celebrate the day they have all of their players healthy and ready to play.
“We’re waiting to see what a full-strength Mavericks team looks like,” Dinwiddie said. “And in the meantime, we’re also using the next man up mentality and not making excuses in our day-to-day preparation, focus, wins, practice, etc.
“We show up every game to play to try to win. But in terms of the long-term outlook and run, of course we’re looking to be healthy as well.”
Here are the three takeaways from the three-point loss to the Pelicans.
GAFFORD’S BEST GAME EVER?: Mavs center Daniel Gafford proved that he can be a major scorer in the middle as he poured in a career-high 27 points on a
very efficient 12-of-13 from the field. Gafford also hauled in 12 rebounds and blocked two shots in 30 minutes while starting in place of the injured Dereck Lively II.
DINWIDDIE WAS ALL OVER THE PLACE: Spencer Dinwiddie did a little bit of everything on Wednesday in trying to help his team win. The Mavs’ guard tallied 20 points, grabbed five rebounds, distributed four assists and picked up three steals in 38 workmanlike minutes. And he scored – had goaltending been rightfully called – the potential game-winning basket with five seconds remaining.
PELICANS’ DYNAMIC DUO: The New Orleans Pelicans’ duo of Dejounte Murray and Trey Murphy III combined for almost half of their team’s 119 points on Wednesday. Murray finished with 30 points, seven rebounds and seven assists, while Murphy added 24 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and three blocks.
X: @DwainPrice
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