In Suns, Mavs face otherwordly challenge
DALLAS — History won’t remember that Mike Conley dragged his foot and traveled with five seconds to go. Bojan Bogdanovic’s wide-open three at the buzzer that clanged off the side of the rim will be forgotten. Only Utah fans will have any memory of their leading scorer, Donovan Mitchell, missing 80 percent of his three-point shots over the course of the six-game series.
The Mavericks advanced in the playoffs late Thursday night. That is all that counts, even if Luka Doncic said on national TV the team was “bull-bleeping” around in the first half. By a 98-96 count, for the first time in 11 years, Dallas is moving on up.
And while you would think there should be a more gradual stepladder in place for a franchise that has been dormant for so long in the postseason … there is not. The Mavericks get the best team in the land in the next round. The Suns’ 32-9 home record was the best in the league this season. So was their 32-9 road record.
Dallas has not defeated Phoenix even in a regular season game since the pre-bubble days of November 2019. Take heart, though. Most of the games have been close with seven of the nine straight losses by single digits, so the Mavericks, now excelling at clutch time, just have to figure out how to close the deal.
Dallas and Phoenix emerged from challenging first-round series in remarkably similar fashion Thursday. Both trailed pesky road foes by double digits at halftime, although it has to be said that the New Orleans Pelicans were playing at a much higher level than Utah. Pesky is about all the Jazz had going for them at the end. Both Dallas and Phoenix took charge in the third quarter and held on from that point.
You can give the Mavs’ defense all the credit you like (and they deserve plenty) for the Jazz owning the worst 3-point shooting percentage in the first round. But Game 6 began with Utah missing wide open threes and ended with Bogdanovic doing it one more time as the Jazz went 12-for-65 (18.5 percent) in the final two defeats after squaring the series at 2-2 last Saturday.
This next challenge will be dramatically different.
Instead of Mike Conley at the very end of his usefulness trying to run the attack, Phoenix features the point god himself.
Chris Paul made NBA history in going 14-for-14 in the Suns’ close-out win over the Pelicans and seems even more determined than a year ago, when the Suns blew a 2-0 lead on Milwaukee in the NBA Finals, to collect that elusive ring. Instead of Rudy Gobert and his hands of stone at center, Phoenix calls upon young Deandre Ayton, who averaged 20.5 points on 70 percent shooting in the opening round.
Quin Snyder’s Jazz had a few eager defenders but nothing like the Suns’
Mikal Bridges, who finished runner-up to Boston’s Marcus Smart for the Defensive Player of the Year award. He will get plenty of Luka in the next round.
The Suns don’t live and die with the three-point shot, so this will require a new defensive game plan for the Mavericks.
Phoenix is fine shooting twos much of the time because its 52.3 field goal percentage was the NBA’S best in the opening round. Devin Booker, Phoenix’s leading scorer by a long shot during the season, returned Thursday and logged 32 minutes after missing three games with a hamstring injury — different ailment
but same time missed as Luka.
What do the Mavericks have to offer? An offense that spreads people out, launches threes from all angles and can be devastating in the process.
Dallas shot 37 percent from long range against Utah, and Doncic just now is starting to look like himself again. Jalen Brunson would win the Most Improved Player in the playoffs if the NBA offered such an award. He’s handling the ball less with Doncic back in charge but he still delivered 24 points including a huge late 3-pointer Thursday.
Brunson averaged 27.8 points in the opening round and it will be left to him to attack Paul, to draw fouls, to work on flustering the Suns’ leader (who turns 37 during this series) the way New Orleans rookie Jose Alvarado went at him. Brunson can do it with considerably more skill.
After so many years of failures against San Antonio, against Houston, against Oklahoma City and against the Los Angeles Clippers, the Mavericks finally got back in the game Thursday night.
They aren’t just a team that made the playoffs in a league where more than half can say that each spring. They are winners. They are playing with house money against the Suns.
It’s the biggest NBA stage yet for Doncic with surely more to come in the future.
Who’s to tell the Mavericks the future can’t start Monday night in Phoenix?