Anthony Davis and the Mavericks’ Playoff Hopes
Anthony Davis pondered the question and glanced around the Mavericks locker room, perhaps re-counting healthy bodies before trying to answer.
The number seemingly changes moment to moment, so it’s best to check.
Davis’ two-way dominance of Atlanta Wednesday night was the kind of performance that inspires hope for an entire franchise and its fan base, but how much hope is reasonable for this depleted and still-mending team?
Only five regular-season games remain. The Mavericks are fighting for one of the last two play-in tournament spots. They only recently got back Davis, Daniel Gafford and, as of Wednesday, Dereck Lively II from long injury absences and all are playing with restrictions on their minutes.
The Current State of the Mavericks
The 9th-place Mavericks (38-39) on Thursday flew to Los Angeles, where they will face the 44-32 Clippers on both Friday and Saturday.
They lead 10th-place Sacramento by one game in the loss column and 11th-place Phoenix by two games in the loss column, but it’s even more tenuous than it appears because both the Kings and Suns have clinched the tiebreaker over Dallas.
Phoenix is without Kevin Durant and its next four games are at Boston, at New York and at home against the Warriors and OKC, so even a split of these two Clippers games could solidify Dallas’ chances of finishing no worse than 10th.
Historic Injury Luck
These aren’t the aspirations Dallas carried into the season as the reigning Western Conference champion, but then no one except perhaps general manager Nico Harrison fathomed there would be a trade of Luka Doncic.
And certainly no one anticipated the Mavericks’ historically bad injury luck. How historic? On Wednesday night Dallas’ player-games lost count reached 333 games, quietly surpassing the 1999-2000 season (332 games lost) as the second-most painful in franchise history.
Mercifully the franchise record of 363 player-games lost in 1997-98 appears out of reach, but with Irving, Dante Exum and Olivier-Maxence Prosper out for the season, this season’s injury toll will reach at least 348 games.
Building Momentum
In each of his three previous seasons, coach Jason Kidd publicly stressed the importance of building late-season momentum and peaking for the playoffs.
Dallas did that in 2022-23, winning 17 of its last 22 regular season games to spark a surprising run to the conference finals.
Last season the Mavericks won 16 of 18 games, rested starters while losing the last two games, then made a surprising run to the NBA Finals.
This season’s Mavericks are almost out of runway. With no Irving and with Davis, Gafford and Lively on minutes restrictions, building momentum will be challenging to say the least.
Which is why we haven’t heard Kidd use words such as “momentum” or “peaking” any time recently or really at all this season.
Kidd’s Perspective
So before the Atlanta game, I broached the subject of peaking to Kidd. Given the look on his face, I thought Kidd might launch into a version of the Jim Mora “Playoffs? You kidding me!” rant.
“Peaking, that wouldn’t be fair to talk about today or tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe at the end of the regular season, we can find a hot hand.”
Unlike Mora, who at the time of his 2001 rant was disgusted with the play of his Indianapolis Colts, Kidd is proud of his team’s effort and resolve throughout this season of adversity.
I followed up by asking if Dallas peaking for the playoffs is even possible?
“Yeah, it’s possible,” Kidd said. “It’s possible because look what we’re doing. No one thought this was possible. No one in this room thought we were going to be where we are.
“So it is possible. With the group that we have, we truly believe that we can play at a high level and that we can win. . . This is totally different than last year. So hopefully we do peak at the right time in the play-in, if we get there.”
“We can kind of gauge [potential] a little bit,” Davis said. “But until we’re able to get everyone off minute restrictions, in the time we’re allotted to be on the floor, we’ve got to give it all we got.”
Davis paused, glanced to his right at the empty locker stall normally occupied by Kyrie Irving, and without anyone asking, addressed the elephant in the room.
“We won’t actually know because we’re missing Kai; so we’ll never know how good we really can be. But with the guys we have, we have enough to definitely make some noise this postseason.”
Define postseason: Traditionally it meant being one of the top eight teams in each conference. But now the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference are decided by a single-elimination play-in tournament among the 7th-through-10th place teams.
AD’s dominance: See photos from Mavericks’ thrilling win over Hawks, capped with Anthony Davis’ game-winner
Still, Davis’ 34-point, 15-rebound, 5-block performance was a palpable dose of hope, even as the Mavericks eked out a two-point win over an Atlanta team that played the previous night. Or, as Klay Thompson put it when I asked what Davis’ performance meant, given the Mavericks’ current state:
“It means everything. It means so much because we’re trying to build for the postseason. When you have a closer and a
