Wednesday was not exactly a very good day at the office for the Mavericks.
With Patrick Mahomes – the Most Valuable Player of the most recent Super Bowl — and his wife sitting courtside, the Mavs put up a minimal amount of defensive pressure in getting sacked by the Toronto Raptors, 127-116, before an American Airlines Center sellout crowd of 20,063.
The loss dropped the Mavs to 6-2 on the season entering Friday’s home game against the Los Angeles Clippers, while the Raptors squared their record at 4-4.
Toronto took advantage of the absence of Mavs starting center Dereck Lively II, who missed the game with a non-COVID illness. With no Lively available to help protect the rim, the Raptors went into attack mode again and again and again and wound up outscoring the Mavs in the paint, by a huge 72-40 margin.
“We missed (Lively) a lot,” coach Jason Kidd said. “There was no one in the paint tonight, and that just shows how important he is to our team.
“But it’s the next man up mentality, and we just didn’t do a good job on the perimeter or in the paint of protecting the paint and the rim.”
With that assessment by Kidd — coupled with 12 missed free throws, 16 turnovers and a 12-point deficit in rebounds — the Mavs know they were their own worst enemy on Wednesday.
When asked if fatigue was a factor, Mavs guard Luka Doncic said: “I mean, it’s the third game in four days. But you know, it’s the NBA.
“Everybody gets those kinds of schedules. It shouldn’t be an excuse.”
Pascal Siakam took advantage of Lively’s absence by scoring 30 of his 31 points inside the paint. In other words, he just really had his way around the rim, considering no one put up much resistance.
“I mean we didn’t need this game to show that we depend on (Lively),” said Kyrie Irving, who finished with 22 points and five assists. “He knows how big of a presence he is in the middle of that paint, how much he covers up a lot of our mistakes and gives us second-chance opportunities.”
The Raptors started putting some distance between themselves and the Mavs in the third quarter when they outscored Dallas, 37-30, to take a 99-88 lead into the fourth quarter. Toronto stretched its lead to as high as 15 points (114-99) late in the fourth quarter when it kept working inside for easy opportunity baskets.
“It was all on us to really do the little things and continue to talk about that every time we come in here and we don’t perform the way we expect to,” Irving said. “Details.
“We’re giving up a lot of points, especially in that third quarter, and the second quarter, too. They were driving the ball today, and they made it difficult for us to double team them.”
Siakam and Anunoby tallied 16 points apiece in the first half, which ended with Toronto ahead, 62-58. At that juncture, Doncic had 16 points and five rebounds for the Mavs, Derrick Jones Jr. had 15 points, Hardaway contributed 11 points and Irving had 10 points and five assists.
The Mavs flew out of the gate at the start of the game, finishing plays with crisp passes. Primarily it was the Irving-to-Jones connection that got the Mavs going.
Jones scored four baskets in the first six minutes of the game – three of them on dunks, one of them a three-pointer, and all four baskets coming off assists from Irving – as the Mavs took a 20-13 lead. Doncic followed with a hoop which gave the Mavs their largest lead (22-13) of the game.
But all of that was short-lived as the Raptors started pounding the boards and getting out in transition and making life miserable for the Mavs.
“We had 11 turnovers in the first half,” Kidd said. “So, that put us in a bad way, because when we turned it over or we didn’t get the rebound offensively, they just ran on us and a lot of their points in the paint were in transition.
“If you don’t take care of the ball – as we talked about before the game — they’re going to get out and run, and they did that at a high level tonight.”
In the end, it became a tall task for the Mavs to try and stitch together consistent stops on the defensive end of the court while also trying to string together their share of points.
“We just can’t make excuses when we’re going technically small ball, or we have a different lineup out there,” Irving said. “The guys are playing different roles, different positions. We just can’t make excuses for ourselves. I think that was the point of emphasis tonight.
“We just got to be better when we’re out there. We are kind of on one side of the floor, and I’m out there and I’m guarding OG (Anunoby) or guarding Scotty (Barnes). It’s all about will, and we just got to be better in that aspect mentally.”
Doncic led the Mavs with 31 points, seven rebounds, eight assists and four steals, Tim Hardaway Jr. tallied 17 points, and Derrick Jones Jr. scored all 15 of his points in the first half and also collected five rebounds and three blocks.
In addition to Siakam, the Raptors got 26 points from Anunoby, Dennis Schroder contributed 18 points and five assists, Gary Trent Jr. scored 16 points, Barnes had 14 points and 14 rebounds, and Chris Boucher added 10 points.
“They did a good job of just finding their shooters, and you could feel their intensity tonight, and their physicality matched it,” Irving said. “You got to give credit to them.
“But we’re going to look at film tomorrow and definitely look at some of our plays that we took off — whether it was down the stretch or in the first three quarters. We just need to be better and continue to build that trust, especially on the defensive end.”