DALLAS — Somewhere in the third quarter, I recognized that I had been wrong, that the Mavericks, in fact, were not going to win a game in this series against Utah without Luka Doncic. For all their hard work to replace him, their impressive resolve at the defensive end, it’s just too hard to overcome a superstar deficiency in the NBA playoffs.
It happened in the third quarter in Saturday’s 99-93 Utah victory at American Airlines Center, because that’s when Donovan Mitchell took over the basketball game. For most of the quarter, he outscored Dallas. Ultimately, the Mavs scored 22 points in the period while Mitchell had 19 of Utah’s 28. But, it was a big reminder — the only reminder on a day where the Mavericks mostly kept Mitchell under control — that a superstar can carry a team through the tough moments or through a quarter or a half and that it’s just going to be too hard for Dallas to score in this series until their best player returns.
Doncic scored 26 percent of the Mavericks’ points per game this season but he had 30 percent of the team’s assists. With Luka dribbling the ball, good things were right around the corner.
