The Mavs are a team of two faces

They have been struggling in the first halves but winning the games in the second ones. How? With a significant capacity to close the matches.

Compared to last season, the Mavs seem to be a different team. They are playing well in the clutch minutes and positively responded to Doncic’s bad nights. Obviously, Luka is irreplaceable, but Williams and Lively II´s contributions and Irving´s awareness of his role in the team are some of the factors for the step up in this last game’s results.

Williams, as written last week, is important in both aspects of the game, but I believe the defense organization is to be recognized as his bigger offering. Yes, he is making baskets and his 3-point % is crucial as well, but we are seeing a better defense, and Doncic attributed that to the former Celtics man.

Dereck Lively II is giving the team the interior angle that I think the Mavs were missing last season. He has been rebounding at a high number for a rookie (7.7), many of them coming on the offense, handing his teammates second-chance opportunities. Also, he got along with Doncic from the beginning and has played a part in the pick-and-roll.

Kyrie was out two games and reappeared against the Nuggets, at Denver. He has understood his position on the team. Irving is second to Doncic, but he is expected to deliver almost as much as the Slovenian, particularly during clutch moments. At Orlando, they found each other to end the game with an assist from each to a 3P of the other.

In the headline, I wrote about Dallas being a team with two faces. They show one during the first two quarters, and the other in the final two. Throughout the last week, the Mavs played four games (3-1), two at home and two away: in all of them, they lost the first half but came to play the rest of the game with a different energy and level of concentration, and ended up not only winning the half but the game itself. The Dallas Mavericks only failed to revert the score against last season’s champion Denver Nuggets. However, they did manage to win the second half, but the difference Jokic and company gained in the first quarter is the answer to the loss.

So, putting words in numbers, they went to the break trailing by one against the Bulls and won the game by nine. The fifteen-point gap Nuggets took in the 24 first minutes was key to the outcome (70-55 FH, 55-59 SH). Against the Hornets, Dallas came back from a twelve-point difference (50-62) and concluded the game six ahead (124-118). At Orlando, the magic continued, and the Mavs reverted the score one more time: 66-52 in favor of the home team at the midtime, and 117-102 when the buzzer called the end.

Dallas has collected three wins and only one loss in the span of one week. And that defeat came against the NBA champion. 6-1 is the record after the first seven games. The team isn´t playing at the best level, however, they have been collecting victories in the meantime, and nothing is better than having space to improve and work to refine some details while winning.

Some of those mentioned triumphs were seen last year as losses. And this is another step forward for the team. Winning while not playing at the highest level, winning difficult matches, winning with Irving injured and Doncic with a bad night. Dallas is winning, and that is good news.