'Straight to DVD: The 2022-23 Dallas Mavericks Story'
PLUS: some wild upsets, the Nets keep rolling, the Suns look unstoppable and an alarming highlight from Victor Wembanyama.
Good morning. Today’s email is extremely long on account of all of the basketball, so you’ll want to click the headline to open it in a browser if you’re seeing this in your email inbox. Let’s basketball.
Scores
FRIDAY
Bulls 121, Hornets 91 — See, Mavericks? This is how a play-in team deals with the Hornets.
Thunder 117, Pacers 121 — Really tough loss for OKC after barely beating the Pistons in their prior game. As of Friday night, this loss dropped them to 10th, just a half-game ahead of Dallas but with the head-to-head tiebreaker. Bench depth is a problem here.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander collected a rebound while holding his sneaker.
39 in the loss for SGA. Still no Tyrese Haliburton for Indiana — we presume he’s done — but Buddy Hield coming off the bench over the past week or so is a weird twist at this stage of the season.
Raptors 110, Sixers 117 — The events of Friday night — Philly and Boston winning, Cleveland losing — basically locked the Sixers into the third seed. More interesting were Nick Nurse’s comments before the game.
"First of all, I think when this season gets done, we'll evaluate everything, and even personally, I'm going to take a few weeks to see where I'm at, you know?" Nurse said. "Like you said, where my head's at. And just see how the relationship with the organization is and everything. It's been 10 years for me now, which is a pretty good run. I don't know, over those 10 years we got to be up there in number of wins with anybody in the league. I don't even know where that is, but we've had a lot of big seasons.
"And then, right now, my head is to make this as long of a season as possible. This team needs playoff experience. So that is where I'm at right now ... finish out these six, see where we land, see if we can't creep up a spot or two in the standings, and then give them hell in the playoffs, see if we can get in a real series and take it from there."
I wrote about the NBA coaching carousel to come in March, and the Raptors were on that list of eight teams where something could happen. It sounds like a departure could be mutual.
Magic 116, Wizards 109 — Markelle Fultz.
Hawks 107, Nets 124 — Another 40-point performance for Mikal Bridges. This was a close game at halftime, but the Nets won the third 42-24. The Hawks shot 55% in the third quarter and lost it by 18 points. How a team starting Clint Capela and Dejounte Murray can be this bad on defense is an amazing testament to how bad a couple other of those starters are on that end.
The Nets will be in the playoffs despite trading Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving for a bucket of wing players (one of which is an outright star now) and draft picks. Incredible.
Knicks 130, Cavaliers 116 — Big win for New York without Julius Randle. A veritable duel between Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell. Reminded me of their showdowns in the Western Conference playoffs just a year ago!
One of the best quote tweets of the season.
Pistons 115, Rockets 121 — Alperen Sengun is perhaps his most beautiful dime yet. I definitely thought that was going to the right corner.
If Domantas Sabonis is Diet Jokic, Sengun is like Fizzy Water Jokic.
Detroit will now almost assuredly end the regular season with the worst record in the league.
Clippers 94, Grizzlies 108 — Los Angeles needs every win. The play-in is still a real threat to them. And yet Kawhi Leonard played 18 minutes in the first half, and not at all in the second half. The Clips had been up 20 in the first quarter, but lost the lead and trailed by four at the break. With a game on Saturday, it appears management — not necessarily Kawhi and seemingly not Ty Lue — wanted to allow Leonard to play in that second game. So he left the game at the half. The Clips went down by as many as 22 and lost by 14. The Suns, Warriors and Lakers all won their games. It appears the other players on the team didn’t know the plan for Kawhi.
This franchise is pretty weird. I’m among the most sympathetic analysts around load management and player health. And this is weird stuff.
Anyway, here’s David Roddy smashing on Ivica Zubac.
That’s good stuff.
Lakers 123, Timberwolves 111 — When Anthony Davis is playing like this, there aren’t many teams in the NBA that can slow him down.
This was weird. Someone on the Lakers has to take a foul to get AD some help! And it seems like they tried, but the Wolves couldn’t hang onto the ball and kept giving up fast break advantages … up a player.
Meanwhile, the COVID protocols seem to have disappeared from our consciousness but Contagious Illness is undefeated.
Hot take, perhaps, but if a player is sick enough with ~anything contagious~ to be vomiting and laying on the floor during breaks, should they be in the arena at all? Haven’t we learned anything? I know we’re collectively annoyed at load management, but can we all agree to support Viral Load Management?
Kings 138, Blazers 114 — The Kings returned to Sacramento at 1 AM after this game for the first time since clinching a playoff berth earlier this week. So a few hundred fans mobilized at the airport.
View from inside a Kings assistant coach’s car leaving the airport.
Nuggets 93, Suns 100 — No Nikola Jokic again. This was a blowout that the Other Nuggets erased in the fourth. But that resulted in a lot more minutes of Kevin Durant and Devin Booker playing together, which is probably not a bad thing for the Suns.
SATURDAY
Mavericks 122, Heat 129 — The Mavericks are absolutely horrific on defense and horrific in close games. Since the trade, including both of their weekend games, Dallas has an average scoring margin of -0.5 — which indicates roughly an average team. But they are 8-16 in that span. Brutal! 8th in offense and 25th in defense since the trade. They were 22nd in defense before the trade.
Dallas is 4-14 in clutch games since the deadline. Most of their games have been close, and they are losing a lot more of them than they are winning! They are -9 points per 100 possessions in 80 clutch minutes since the trade.
Jimmy Butler:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Good Morning It's Basketball to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.