The first half of the Mavericks’ season-opening game against the Suns seemed similar to the dominating Western Conference finals-clinching Game 7 performance Dallas unleashed against Phoenix in the same building five months earlier.
But that changed in the second half. After leading by 22 points in the second quarter, the Mavericks committed as many turnovers (six) as they made baskets in the third quarter, allowing the Suns to rally for a 107-105 win.
The Mavericks’ second-half collapse spoiled a solid season-opening performance for 5th-year superstar Luka Doncic, who finished with 35 points, nine rebounds, and six assists in 37 minutes.
Christian Wood, who Dallas acquired in a summer trade with Houston, played well in his debut with the team, tallying 25 points and eight rebounds in 24 minutes as the sixth-man center.
“We relaxed a little bit,” Doncic said. “Not [thinking] the game’s done, but we just relaxed and [thought] it’s a lot of points, we’re going to get there, we’re going to win. Like I said, we just can’t relax. It’s happened a lot of times. We can’t be blowing leads. This is a thing we have to work on, and we will for sure.”
Doncic led the Mavericks early in the game, scoring 13 points in the opening period, helping give Dallas a 32-24 lead after one quarter.
With Doncic on the bench to start the second quarter, the Dallas reserves continued where he left off, pouring it on Phoenix with Spencer Dinwiddie and Tim Hardaway Jr. raining threes, extending the Mavericks’ lead to as many as 22 points.
Dallas kept pressing, leading by at least 15 points through the final eight minutes of the first half, taking a 62-45 lead into halftime.
However, the Mavericks’ handle on the game began to slip when Spencer Dinwiddie, who had 13 points in the first half, picked up his fourth foul just one minute into the third quarter.
Dinwiddie sat for the final 11 minutes of the third, allowing the Suns to focus their defensive efforts on Doncic even more, as he was forced to serve as the team’s lead initiator, facilitator, creator, and scorer for the entire period.
Phoenix double-teamed Doncic and methodically whittled their deficit down to one point with one minute left in the third. Meanwhile, Dallas went a stretch of nine minutes with only two made baskets, as the Suns won the third quarter 31-19.
A scoring flurry from Wood increased the Dallas lead to 15 with 8:31 remaining. Wood scored 16 consecutive points for the Mavericks in a 4-minute, 35-second span that bridged the third and fourth quarters.
But the Mavericks’ handle on the game began to slip again when Phoenix’s star guard Devin Booker checked back into the game with the Suns down 15. Booker had seven of his 28 points and six of his nine assists in the fourth quarter.
However, unlikely sources helped deliver the final daggers in the Dallas defeat. A three-pointer from Phoenix’s reserve forward Damion Lee, followed by a basket from backup point guard Cameron Payne, gave the Suns their first lead since the first quarter (101-100) with 3:10 remaining.
Then Lee, who had all 11 of his points in the final quarter, hit another three-pointer from the top of the arc. Booker added a free throw to extend their advantage over the Mavericks to five points.
Doncic had an answer. He hit a pair of free throws with 1:21 left and completed a physical three-point play to tie the game at 105 with 32.8 seconds remaining.
The Mavericks also got what they wanted on the ensuing defensive possession, forcing Booker to give up the ball. Unfortunately for Dallas, Lee grabbed the pass from Booker and connected on the game-winning mid-range jump shot with 9.7 seconds left.
Doncic took the final possession himself, hustling to the left wing and attempting a long three-pointer a couple of ticks before the final buzzer. But his attempt was off the mark, bouncing off the front of the rim.
“It’s no different than how we played in the regular season last year,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said, calling back to three regular-season losses to the Suns last year, “in the sense that we played for three and a half quarters and then run out of steam.”
The Mavericks were hurt by their failure to capitalize on their free throw attempts. Dallas took 12 more free throws than Phoenix, but their 13 misses (21-of-34, 61.8%) kept Phoenix in striking distance.
In particular, the revamped frontcourt of Wood (3-of-10) and JaVale McGee (1-of-4) combined to miss ten free throws.
Dallas will look to get its first win of the season in its home opener against the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday night.
