PORTLAND, Ore. – Chauncey Billups stressed beforehand that his Portland Trail Blazers wouldn’t be able to throw anything at Luka Doncic that he hadn’t seen or experienced before.
Schematically, Billups certainly was right. Logically, though, Doncic in five NBA seasons never had faced a night like Saturday night in Moda Center.
That is because 48 hours earlier in Los Angeles he played a career-high 53 minutes in Dallas’ double-overtime win over the Los Angeles Lakers. So it was little surprise that Doncic and other weary Mavericks delivered flat performances in Portland’s 136-119 victory.
Yes, Dallas as a team shot 52.4% and had little trouble scoring, but it also allowed 55.7% shooting by the Blazers and 36 points by Damian Lillard.
Doncic scored a season-low 15 points, shooting 7-of-19 from the field and 1-of-6 on free throws in 35 minutes. Compounding matters for the Mavericks, they have to turn around and face Portland here again on Sunday evening, almost certainly without Doncic.
In other words, while the victory over the Lakers was thrilling, with Doncic hitting game-tying 3-pointers in regulation and the first overtime, the ripple-effect could have led to back-to-back defeats here in Rip City.
Doncic’s previous season low was the 19 points he scored in 28 minutes at Minnesota on Dec. 19, a game in which he was ejected with two technical fouls. In fact, Saturday marked only the 27th time in Doncic’s 304-game NBA career that he has scored 15 or fewer points. He’s scored in single digits on only five occasions.
Just the Mavericks’ luck: They not only came into this game with Doncic having played big minutes in Los Angeles, as well as Spencer Dinwiddie (51), Tim Hardaway Jr. (48) and Reggie Bullock (47), they played without Christian Wood (sore right ankle) and faced a desperate Blazers team that had lost five straight.
Much like when Dallas earlier in this five-game road trip faced, and lost to, a Clippers team that had lost six straight games.
The heavy minutes load didn’t seem to affect Bullock, who poured in a season-high 24 points and sank a career-high eight 3-pointers in 10 attempts.
“Reggie looked like he was fine,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said of the minutes load on most of the starters. “Spencer, Timmy and Luka are playing a lot of minutes. And so we’re gonna have to look at getting other guys in, so we don’t run those minutes up.”
Billups before the game expressed doubt in his team’s ability -- or that of any NBA team team -- to slow Doncic, who entered the game with an NBA-leading 34.7-point scoring average.
“There’s nothing that we’re gonna do that’s gonna surprise him, throw him off,” Billups said. “He’s seen it all. We’ve all as coaches, we’ve all tried it all against guys like him. Sometimes that night it might work. One or two of the coverages might work. Sometimes they don’t.”
The Blazers did of course double-team Doncic most of the night. And it probably factored into his season-low five first-half points, breaking the seven points he scored at Washington in November, but for the most part, it looked like Doncic was flat tired.
The Mavericks on this night wasted a great shooting performance by Bullock, who entered the game shooting 34% from the field and 31% from 3-point distance.
Bullock said that an encouraging talk from Kidd gave him a boost of confidence after struggling from the field much of the season.
“Just being able to talk to the coach and getting his advice and getting his confidence in me enabled me to go out and relax and shoot the ball,” Bullock said. “So just having that conversation with him, knowing how much he believed in me and how much the team believes in me to shoot the ball, I’ve just got to be aggressive with my shot.”
