Mavericks: Season On Line Monday In Denver
The Dallas Mavericks have won two of their last 12 games and see their playoff chances hanging in the balance before taking on Denver Nuggets at Pepsi Center.
The Dallas Mavericks have reached the point of ‘doe-or-die’ for the 2015-16 NBA season. If there’s actually a choice to made here, it’s looking much like the latter is to transpire.
When you can’t keep the – wait for it – Sacramento Kings from scoring 133 points in a completely embarrassing loss in an arena named after a mattress store, things might not be going your way. When you’re missing two of your top five players, thus creating more instability for your team at crunch time, things are definitely not going your way.
To be clear, the Mavericks have been just horrid defensively over the last couple of games. Dallas is giving up 130.5 points, which is partially understandable given that they gave up 128 to the Golden State Warriors on Friday night.
But it’s completely different when you give up 133 points to a Sacramento Kings team that entered Sunday’s game with a record of 28-44. Satisfying is the fact that Kings point guard Rajon Rondo is relegated to NBA purgatory in Sacramento, but one has to really wonder where exactly the Mavericks are.
With key players like Chandler Parsons and Deron Williams out of the lineup, the former possibly never to return, there’s far more questions for the Mavericks moving forward than there are answers – this might be putting it mildly.
Dallas has no first-round pick in the NBA Draft this season, unless they miss the playoffs and somehow draw a top three pick in the lottery – don’t hold your breath on that.
All there is to do is win games and make as much noise as possible in the post-season. Wesley Matthews offered the following to Eddie Sefko of Dallas Morning News after getting pasted by a Kings team that supposedly had nothing to play for.
"We got to decide if we want to go home after the last game or not. Everybody’s got to look in the mirror and decide what we want to do. Do we want to take a run — anything can happen in the playoffs — lay everything on the line nine more times? And let the chips fall. Or do we want to go to Travelocity."
While it’s really not a matter of preferring to book airline tickets on the internet over playing postseason basketball, taking a badly needed vacation has to be a temptation at this point. This season has been a long, slow decline for the Mavericks and the fall seems to be gaining momentum the closer this team gets to the end of the regular season schedule.
Head coach Rick Carlilse might steal a quote from former Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Mora, who famously lambasted reporters following an aggravating loss in 2001 against the San Francisco 49ers. Mora spewed still-hilarious ridicule when asked about his team’s chances of making the playoffs that year.
“Playoffs?”
That was really all that needed to be said for a team that would finish with a record of 6-10, and also one that would miss the postseason.
Same goes for these Mavericks, a team with a lot of heart and effort, but also one that just isn’t good enough to play into late April.
It matters not that the Mavericks handled the Denver Nuggets in two games earlier this season, both at American Airlines Center.
Critical here is the fact that Dallas was just beaten by the Nuggets at Pepsi Center earlier in March, a month in which the Mavericks happen to have won just three games – that’s it.
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A loss to the Nuggets would put the Mavericks four games below .500 and hopelessly beyond any chance of getting back into the Western Conference playoff bracket with only eight games remaining.