What the Dallas Mavericks needed was a win at home. Any home win, really, would’ve worked fine. It could have been a misshapen and hideous performance that barely crawled over the line or an easy stroll that was never in doubt, as long as it came against the Utah Jazz during this first round series’ opening two games. It’s a result the Mavericks needed to stay afloat without Luka Dončić, who has missed the first two games and could still miss more. Just a win. That’s all.
Instead, the Mavericks did whatever the hell Game 2 was, a marvelous 110-104 win crammed full of more historic records and career nights than maybe any single game ever has had before. I’m sorry, but my brain is still whirring with the numbers I’ve seen. Do you want to just marvel at them?
- Jalen Brunson set a career high with 41 points, the most points he’s scored since high school. He was a teenager the last time he scored this many points in a game.
- He also had the first performance with 40-plus points and zero turnovers in Mavericks postseason history. Only six other players in league history have had at least 40 points, five rebounds and five assists in a playoff game without turning the ball over.
- There had only been seven instances of a team turning over the ball three times or fewer in a postseason game; the Mavericks’ Game 2 was the eighth.
- Those three turnovers also tied a franchise record for any game, including the regular season.
- Maxi Kleber had never hit eight 3s during any game before Monday’s in his professional career — international, European or the NBA.
- Kleber made nine 3s in the entire month of March.
- Not only did Kleber shoot 8-of-11 on 3s, but he nearly set his personal record for 3-point attempts. He took 12 shots from distance in a January 2020 game against Charlotte. Monday’s game was the second-most 3s he’s taken and only the third time he’s had double-digit attempts.
- Dallas set a franchise postseason record with 22 made 3s, and 17 of them were uncontested, the most uncontested postseason 3s any team has converted in a single game in the past 10 seasons, per ESPN.
Dallas trailed by seven points at halftime. In one sense, its historic second-half performance — where the hot individual starts turned into career evenings, where the reasons for belief in a turnaround became a six-point win — was absolutely necessary for this series’ continuation. Who cares if the Mavericks can’t make history every night? They aren’t expecting to win this series without Dončić’s return, and holding out until he’s back, even if it takes statistically improbable numbers scattered across the box score, is the only thing that matters. It’s unlikely Brunson scores another 41 points and Kleber hits eight more 3s in following games this series, just because career evenings are inherently hard to come by. After the game, they certainly weren’t apologizing for doing so — for tying this series at one game apiece with Dončić’s calf muscle healing more each day.
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But the Mavericks, in another sense, didn’t make history as much as they repeated it. Ignore those bullet points with all those records, and focus on what happened. Last season, the Utah Jazz lost in the second round because the Los Angeles Clippers played five-out basketball against them, constantly drove past their weakest perimeter defenders and then passed enough times for open 3s to appear. It’s a winning strategy against the Jazz that they still clearly haven’t solved. The Mavericks’ Game 2 performance was scintillating and yet also repetitive, featuring the same defensive breakdowns by the same team, ones which Dallas exploited ruthlessly in the second half.
After the Game 1 defeat, I wrote about how Jason Kidd was running out of options. He’s proven himself this season as a smart head coach who wants opponents to adjust to how his team plays, preferring a puristic approach to a pragmatic one. But his roster has limitations, ones which are amplified dramatically without Dončić. There were only four players Kidd knew he trusted for the bulk of the minutes. He gambled that the fifth would be Kleber, and after cycling through various options, closed out that game with the German big man. Kleber revs the team’s defense, but we all know well that he has struggled offensively for months. He missed an open 3-pointer with 1:35 remaining in the game that could’ve put Dallas ahead, and Utah’s game-sealing shot came on the very next possession.
Game 2 featured those four core players — Brunson plus Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith and Reggie Bullock — playing 167 of the 192 possible minutes. Kidd also tossed five minutes to Trey Burke, a desperate shot at finding another option that could buoy the team facing a numerical problem with its rotation. But Kidd had correctly assessed that Kleber was the best gamble he could make to be a reliable fifth player. During Kleber’s struggles in the season’s closing months, he couldn’t practice. “I was like, ‘Do I want to play, or do I want to practice?’” Kleber said last week, explaining why he sat out the season’s final four regular season games. After Game 2, Kleber said the practice and rest he received in the past weeks definitely contributed to his 25-point performance.
Game 1’s dilemma was cyclical: Dwight Powell started but was beaten off the dribble too often, causing defensive breakdowns. Kleber replaced him, but he wasn’t making or even taking enough 3s for Rudy Gobert to leave the paint, which meant the Dallas guards couldn’t create good enough shots, even after blowing past Utah’s perimeter players. It was Dāvis Bertāns’ turn next, but he provided too glaring of a mismatch for Utah’s guards to exploit. Kidd went back to Powell. Back to Kleber. Back to Bertāns. It ultimately didn’t work.
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But if there’s one thing Kidd has preached all season, it’s his trust in his players and the creation of a culture where they believe in each other. “The beauty of it is his teammates trust (Kleber),” he said after Game 2. There are strategic fascinations to this series, ones we’ll dive deeper into prior to Game 3, but Kidd believing he can return to Kleber — and that gamble, the statistically correct one, paying off like it did on Monday — is what changed this series. And Game 1’s cyclical dilemma for the Mavericks turned into a cyclical dilemma for the Jazz in Game 2: one where their guards were running in circles, trying to catch up to the next Dallas shooter, which must have felt like chasing ghosts from just last year.
The Mavericks probably won’t set so many records it requires eight bullet points in another game this series. Brunson might not be quite as brilliant, even though he was truly sensational in Monday’s game. These heavy minute totals might wear down Dallas as this series progresses. But Dallas didn’t just have an abnormal evening for the textbooks; this wasn’t something where Utah can just shrug and say, “It happens.” No, the Mavericks forced the Jazz to adjust to them. And that’s exactly where Dallas wants to be.
(Photo: Glenn James / NBAE via Getty Images)
