With playoff seeding in the balance, Mavericks open crucial road trip on promising note

SALT LAKE CITY – Six nights earlier in San Antonio, the Mavericks won despite one of the worst-shooting nights of Luka Doncic’s career.

Doncic was just as frigid for half of Monday night in the Delta Center, but fortunately for Dallas, it didn’t have to overcome their star’s shooting woes. Doncic caught fire in the second half and the Mavericks rode in his wake to a 115-105 win over Utah.

Doncic scored 21 of his 29 points in the second half as the Mavericks (42-29) won for the eighth time in their last nine games and began this long and crucial road trip on a promising note.

“No,” said Doncic, when asked if he had flashbacks to the San Antonio game, when he shot 6-for-27. Asked what he did differently, he said, “Just keep going, find a way to win.”

Doncic shot 3-of-12 in the first half and 7-of-12 in the second. With 13 assists and 12 rebounds, he also posted his 75th career triple-double, moving him to within one of James Harden for eighth-most in NBA history.

The Mavericks got 27 points from Kyrie Irving and overcame 34 points by Utah’s Lauri Markkanen. After allowing Utah 41 first-quarter points, Dallas according to coach Jason Kidd “adjusted to the physicality” by limiting the Jazz to 37% second-half shooting and 17 fourth-quarter points — only one by Markkanen.

“We’ve got to come out physical from the beginning of the game,” said P.J. Washington, who had 16 points and four rebounds. “They scored 41 in the first quarter. We can’t have that. But I feel like we did a great job the rest of the game on the defensive end.”

This was the start of a five-game, 11-day road trip that might well determine whether the Mavericks enter the playoffs with the security of a top-six seed, or whether they’ll have to fight their way in through the play-in tournament among the seventh-through-10th-place teams.

Awaiting the Mavericks on Tuesday in Sacramento is a Kings team that entered Monday night with the same record as Dallas.

“Starting off the trip, this was step one, game one,” Kidd said. “We can maybe say we passed, now it’s both teams coming off a back-to-back, understanding Sacramento is one of the best teams in the league, tough place to play. So this is a great test for us.”

Asked whether there is much discussion among the players about the importance of the trip, Doncic said: “We talk about it, but we can’t look forward into the future. We’ve got to go game-by-game. If you go look in the future, you’re not going to focus on the on the game we have in front.”

As the Mavericks and Jazz traded leads in the third quarter, this Dallas trip took an auspicious turn back in Texas, where the Spurs – despite playing without Victor Wembanyama — toppled Phoenix. That result, for the moment, left Dallas, Sacramento and Phoenix tied in the West standings.

By night’s end, after Sacramento won at home over Philadelphia, the Mavericks and Kings were tied for sixth with identical 42-29 records, with Phoenix (42-30) half a game behind.

Kidd said it was his belief that the arc of this season — successes and failures alike — had prepared Dallas for not only this trip, but having to play eight of its final 11 games on the road.

“We’ve been tested,” he said. “We’ve won, been on a streak. We’ve lost, had some struggles. But that’s what a team goes through. To be able to use that experience going into this week, we understand how big this is. We understand how big the end of the season is for us.

“We can control what we can control and that’s that our energy and effort has to be high; and that we have to play together. This isn’t just Luka or Kai. We need everybody to do their job. We’re up for that challenge. And it should be fun.”

Four days earlier in Dallas, the Mavericks beat the Jazz by 16 points, but Tuesday’s game marked the returns of Jazz standouts Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson from injury.

Utah had lost five straight; eight of nine; and 16 of its last 19 as whispers of tanking grew louder, but apparently the Jazz decided to go all-in on this night.

Perhaps getting dunked upon 18 times in the last meeting had something to do with that.

“This isn’t going to be the team that we just played,” Kidd warned beforehand. “We’ve got to come out and be physical, take care of the ball, and make open shots.”

With one glaring exception, none of those were necessarily a problem as Dallas fell behind 66-61 at halftime while outshooting Utah 53%-to-46% and committing only four turnovers.

The exception was that Doncic started cold from the field — missing 10 of his first 12 shots and finishing the half 3-of-13, including 0-for-5 from 3-point range.

Doncic warmed up in the third quarter, making three of his five shot attempts and scoring a team-leading 10 points as Dallas forged an 88-88 tie entering the fourth quarter.

This was a tougher slog than the Mavericks would have wanted, playing Doncic for 41 minutes and Irving for 36 entering Tuesday’s quick-turn game in Sacramento, but at this point of the season every win is meaningful.

Now the stage is set for not just one, but two pivotal games against the Kings in Sacramento, the second one occurring on Friday.

“I’m excited,” Washington said. “I can’t wait to go out there and play. I feel like everybody else is excited as well. We all know what’s at stake. It’s going to be an exciting two games.”

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