Dallas now has a chance to become the first 10th-place team to advance to the playoffs since the inception of the Play-In Tournament.
The Dallas Mavericks’ season may have gotten uglier and uglier down the stretch, but hey, at least they’re not the Sacramento Kings. The Mavericks showed up when they could have resigned to the end, with vacation time calling. Dallas took the Kings to the woodshed in the 9-vs.-10 Play-In matchup, winning 120-106 at the Golden 1 Center.
Dallas will meet the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday at the Fedex Forum to decide who gets the 8-seed in the Western Conference playoffs. The Mavs have a chance to become the first 10th-place team since the inception of the Play-In Tournament to advance to the playoffs with a win in Memphis on Friday. Remember, though, that Memphis has won three of four against the Mavs this year, including the last two, both of which came after the Mavs dealt Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers in February. The Grizzlies beat the Mavs 132-97 in the regular season finale on Sunday.
Anthony Davis led the Mavs with 27 points, nine rebounds and three blocked shots in the win at Sacramento. Klay Thompson added 23 and five on 5-of-7 shooting from 3-point range. Demar DeRozan led all scorers with 33 points for the Kings in the loss.
Here are five numbers that loomed large over Wednesday’s win over the Kings, which keeps Dallas’ postseason hopes alive.
9: Early points for Brandon Williams in a four-minute stretch
Backup guard Brandon Williams engineered a little 11-2 spurt in a four-minute stretch starting with the final minute of the first quarter. He connected on his first three attempts from beyond the arc to turn a 27-24 deficit with 1:30 left in the first to a 35-29 Mavericks lead with 9:02 left in the second. Williams hit two 3-balls from the left wing and another from the right wing after he was turned away on a couple of early drives by the Kings’ interior defenders. He finished with 17 on 5-of-8 shooting in the win.
4: Klay Thompson second-quarter 3-pointers
The run was extended to 19-8 when Thompson nailed a pair of 3-pointers sandwiched in between a PJ Washington floater to give Dallas a 43-35 lead with 7:26 left before halftime. All this happened with Davis on the bench, by the way, though he would get going a little later in the second and third quarters. Two Dante Exum free throws, a Naji Marshall dunk and two more Thompson 3-pointers made it a 29-12 run and a 53-39 lead for the Mavericks midway through the second quarter.
Thompson canned those four in a span of just three minutes. He matched the Kings’ second-quarter scoring output by himself (14 points) through the first 7:30 of the frame and finished with 16 points in the second after a transition lay-in for good measure with 2:48 left before the break. Thompson scored 23 points and grabbed five boards on 8-of-11 shooting (5-of-7 from 3-point range) in the win.
44-19: Dallas’ second-quarter scoring outburst
Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
But it wasn’t just Thompson leading the charge from 3-point territory. The Mavs turned the electricity off in the Golden 1 Center in the second quarter, outscoring the Kings 44-19 in the frame. After shooting 2-of-8 from deep in the first quarter, the Mavs made 8-of-12 from beyond the arc in the second quarter. After missing his first three from 3-point range and starting the game 2-of-9 from the floor, Davis joined in the fun late in the second by nailing a pair late in the second on back-to-back possessions.
Davis’ first 3-point make came with 1:23 left in the first half, on a sly little pick-and-pop near the top of the key to put Dallas ahead 68-48. The next time down, he hovered near the top of the key again as Williams’ drive sucked in the Sacramento defense and came open for the rhythm look that extended the Mavs’ lead to a gaudy 23, up 71-48 at halftime.
Williams, Davis and Thompson combined to shoot 9-of-15 from 3-point land in the first half.
13-3: Kings’ third-quarter run
The Mavericks went up 77-51 on two free throws from Davis with nine minutes left in the third quarter. From there, the Kings outscored Dallas 13-3, giving it one last gasp to try to get back into the game. DeRozan and Domantas Sabonis keyed the run, though the scoring spurt came mostly from the Kings’ mid-range game. Zach Lavine drove for an easy layup with seven minutes left in the third before Sabonis found Devin Carter for a rim-rocking jam a minute later to bring Sacramento back to within 80-64.
From there, the Mavs held the Kings at arm’s length and took a 99-81 lead into the fourth quarter.
9-of-23 (39.1%): Anthony Davis shooting
You might look at Davis’ stat line and see that he led the team in scoring and rebounding with 27 points and nine boards in the win that keeps the Mavericks’ season and playoff hopes on life support. You might even think, with three blocked shots mixed in, “Hey, what a game for the big fella.” But he was pretty inefficient all night long, save that stretch late in the second quarter and early in the third when he nailed three straight 3-pointers.
Outside of that stretch, Davis shot 6-for-20 from the field. He shot 2-of-9 in the first quarter. His tendency to live in the 19-foot range and fade away from the basket anytime he’s challenged by a decent defender is maddening at times. He’s a power forward who wants to bring the ball up and jack 3-pointers like a point guard, and that brings a certain stagnation to the Dallas offense.
But, hey, it didn’t hold the Mavs back at all in Wednesday night’s Play-In win, so what the hell do I know?