DALLAS — The tasks keep on coming for the Dallas Mavericks. If it feels as though Phoenix, as defending conference champs and the team with the best regular-season record, should have represented Dallas’ highest hurdle … it didn’t turn out that way.
The Mavs beat the team that was the West’s best in the 2021 season. Then they beat the best of 2022. Well, how about a recent three-time NBA champion for an encore? How about a team that now surrounds Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — ring-earners from 2015, 2017 and 2018 — with a deep, young collection of talent that has the Warriors unbeaten at home in the playoffs?
While it’s true that two-time Finals MVP Kevin Durant is gone, Jordan Poole steps into the mix with his 19.0 points per game and a better field-goal shooting percentage in the playoffs than Steph or Klay. Heck, Poole is even shooting free throws better than Steph. Don’t forget All-Star starter Andrew Wiggins, who tosses in another 14.5 points per night to put their top four scorers over 80 points.
There’s a reason Golden State hasn’t asked Green for much scoring (7.8 per game) in these playoffs. Steve Kerr’s Warriors are the NBA’s leading scorers without a major contribution from him at the basket. But Green still rebounds and distributes (he leads the Warriors in assists) and undeniably will be mixing it up with Mavs fans by the time the series arrives at American Airlines Center for Game 3 Sunday night.
You want to be the best?
First, beat the teams that have been portraying themselves as the best the last two seasons. Now take on the real thing.
Jason Kidd and staff had to radically change their approach between shutting down Utah (getting the Jazz off the 3-point line) and knocking off the Suns (slowing Chris Paul to a crawl and hounding Devin Booker into 12 turnovers in the two elimination games).
The Warriors present new challenges.
The biggest is they don’t parade a 7-footer at center unless they choose to. Dallas got maximum mileage from its five-out offense (five shooters spread around the 3-point line) which turned former Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert into a liability and frustrated Deandre Ayton to the point he was exchanging words with and finally getting benched by Monty Williams in Game 7.
The Warriors present a greater variety of defensive options, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find it difficult to leave Luka Doncic alone in the paint where he is now the league’s best finisher. The problem is if you sag in on him, then the man you leave alone on the 3-point line does even greater damage.
We can only speculate what the Memphis series would have been like for the Warriors had Ja Morant been able to play beyond Game 3. But Curry and Klay and Co. are here, and the series opens in a beautiful new arena in San Francisco as opposed to the longtime opponents’ nightmare over there in Oakland (Dallas fans remember the 2007 playoffs). It’s still a team that won five straight Western Conference finals from 2015 through 2019 before Durant’s exit, Thompson’s major injuries and other roster changes made Golden State playoff watchers instead of participants the last two years. The Warriors were even the first team to finish eighth and fail to qualify for the eight-team conference playoff last year when the league initiated the wild-card format that saw them lose on the road to the Lakers and at home to Memphis.
That feels like ancient history to this team.
Curry’s numbers are not of the other-worldly nature they were during his MVP seasons, but at 26.9 points per game, he has led his team to an 8-3 record in the playoffs with no home-court stumbles. The Warriors are 6-0 at the Chase Center with two close calls and four double-digit wins over Denver and Memphis, an average margin of victory by 14.5 points.
And Curry, Thompson, Poole and Wiggins all are shooting higher percentages from the arc than Doncic.
So what chance does Dallas have?
Probably a very good one. Do the Warriors look any more invincible today than the Suns did two weeks ago when they led the series 2-0? All Dallas did was win four out of five against a team they were 0-11 against since 2019. All Luka did in two elimination games was outscore Booker and Paul by himself, 68-53, while committing three turnovers to their 17.
At the end of the floor where skills are harder to quantify, Dallas’ defense has been exceptional. Utah was missing open 3s by the end of the series and the Suns’ offense was reduced to whatever Booker could create on his own. The Warriors don’t have better offensive weapons, but do they simply have too many of them?
That will be the key question as Golden State returns to a round it has owned to play a team that hasn’t been to the conference finals in 11 years. Teams refusing to believe they are in over their heads or someplace they don’t belong can be the most dangerous in sports.
