These day-after analytical rundowns are called takeaways from a game. But in this case, it’s a takeaway from the last four games.
Mainly, the Mavericks are not capitalizing on an epic stretch by Luka Dončić.
Coach Jason Kidd has called Dončić “one of the best offensive players on the planet.”
He might have underestimated the superstar point guard.
Luka quite simply is the best offensive player right now. Period. At least, over the last four games there is no doubt.
He’s had four consecutive triple-doubles, all with 30 points and three of them with 35 or more. He’s in the same sentence with Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook, the co-kings of outrageous triple-doubles. It’s a tribunal now with Luka.
And yet, the Mavericks are 1-3 in the last week. As Luka said after the Tuesday loss to Indiana, none of the individual things matter right now. The only meaningful thing right now is winning games.
Questions are mounting. So are frustrations. But Dončić knows what the key is to pulling out of this tailspin.
“Positivity,” he said. “It (losing) doesn’t feel good. We have to do something, do better for sure.”
And that won’t happen if people are pulling in different directions. Every team at some point in the season fights doubt. Trust – a buzzword for the Mavericks – is tested.
But there is good news.
“It’s March, we can fix it,” Kidd said. “We’re playing 10 (in the rotation). If we have to cut this thing down to seven then that’s what we’ll do.
“We’ve got a lot of games left. We can look at different rotations. We can look at different starting lineups. We’ve talked about that. We have options. And we’ll explore those.”
But the overlying issue is that, when Luka is rolling like this, a team is supposed to take advantage.
“It’s impossible to guard Luka,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “The guy gets any shot he wants, any time he wants. He’s a great, great player who’s rewriting history with what he’s doing.”
Here’s our other takeaways from Tuesday’s 137-120 loss to the Pacers:
Postgame message is important: The Mavericks talked things out as a team after the game and it was the two most senior members of the roster who did a lot of the talking – Kyrie Irving and Markieff Morris. “It’s most definitely sticking together,” Daniel Gafford said of the gist of the message. “But at the same time, it’s the mindset of coming in night-in and night-out. Kyrie has said it. Markieff has said it. We have a target on our back. We’re one of the best teams in the league and we have to understand there’s going to be a lot of things thrown (at) us. The team we want to be, that’s a team that’s going to withstand those punches and then throw some back.”
Scoreboard watching: The time of the season has come to pay attention to what’s going on around the Mavericks. It’s easy to zero in on their porous defense of late, and it’s been subpar, to say the least. Since the All-Star break, they are 30th in that stretch and they can’t go any lower. But if they don’t get some stops soon, they can kiss any chance of avoiding the play-in tournament goodbye. The Mavericks woke up Wednesday in eighth place in the Western Conference, a half-game ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers and a game up on Golden State. While finishing in the top six and not having to endure the play-in tournament is the goal, finishing seventh or eighth is way preferable to ninth or 10th, where you would have to win at least one game on the road to get into the eight-team playoff field. Suffice it to say that, while all games are equal, the ones in the next month-plus are more equal in terms of how sweet the wins will be and how painful the losses will be.
X: @ESefko
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