The Dallas Mavericks were defeated by the Memphis Grizzlies, 120-103.
It appeared like Dallas would win their fourth straight game when it was announced yesterday that Ja Morant would miss the rest of the season due to a shoulder injury and that Jaren Jackson Jr. would not play. If only everything were that easy.
After Dallas appeared to get off to a fast start and establish a seven-point lead, the Mavericks never really attempted to get back into the game.
When Bismack Biyombo attempted to block Luka’s layup attempt early in the first quarter, he stumbled and fell awkwardly over Doncic’s right leg.
Doncic played for a while longer until eventually being replaced with less than two minutes remaining and leaving the court to return to the locker room. He would return to the game in the second quarter, but midway through the third quarter, he left again for the locker room.
He came and went during the game, which is encouraging for the long-term prognosis because it doesn’t appear that anything was really injured, but when he did return to the game, he was obviously in pain and wasn’t playing as well as he usually did, leaving most of the playmaking chores to others.
Discussing Memphis’ “bench” seems a little absurd. They have a large pool of rotation players rather than a starting five per se because they are always switching up their lineups due to injury. The fact that all nine of the Grizzlies who played tonight lasted between eighteen and thirty-six minutes is proof of this.
Conversely, things quickly went south when Dallas walked to their bench as Luka was being examined in the locker room. In an attempt to find someone who could ignite the squad, Kidd included a number of bench players, but only AJ Lawson, Seth Curry, Richaun Holmes, Grant Williams, and Markieff Morris made a significant impact and none of them had played for even ten minutes prior.
In the league, Dallas and Memphis rank among the top five in terms of three-point attempts made. Dallas takes over 42 shots per game, while Memphis takes 39. It was Memphis who followed the plan in this contest. After taking 37 shots, the Grizzlies made 14 of them, or little less than 38%. Dallas only managed to make nine of its 27 shots, which accounted for 33% of the total.
Apart from the second chance points, when Memphis defeated Dallas 21-8, the majority of the other head-to-head statistics were pretty close. When will Dereck Lively be making a comeback?, but the math isn’t working out in a 17-point loss and a 15-point deficit from three.
