DALLAS – It took exactly a month – and a few migraine headaches here and there — but the Dallas Mavericks finally found their way all the way back to .500.
Saturday’s gritty 113-104 victory over the Boston Celtics at American Airlines Center netted the Mavs their seventh win in their last nine games and evened their won-loss record at 9-9. It’s the first time the Mavs have been .500 since they were 2-2 way back on Oct. 24.
“It means a lot,” forward Harrison Barnes said. “I think after the way we started, things were tough. We were trying to do the right thing, but we couldn’t get together, couldn’t do it as a cohesiveness unit.
“But since then I feel like we’ve bounced back and we’ve been in the right direction.”
The Mavs got going in the right direction against Boston by playing with the same edge that has become a part of the Celtics’ makeup. When tempers were flaring and the game got chippy a few times, the Mavs kept sticking their nose into things and making sure Boston wasn’t going to one-up them on their own home court.
For instance, after rookie Luka Doncic made a sensational alley-oop pass which DeAndre Jordan grabbed and dunked, the sellout crowd of 20,226 went wild. But on Doncic’s trip up the floor, the crowd – and the Mavs – got angry when a forearm by Jalen Brown sent Doncic sprawling to the floor.
After the dust settled, Brown and Jordan were each whistled for a technical foul, play resumed and the Celtics eventually took their only lead of the game at 74-73 with 5:26 remaining in the third quarter. But from there it was all Mavs all the time as Dallas went on a spirited 33-16 run and assumed a 106-90 lead with 5:25 left in the game.
Three-pointers by Devin Harris, Wesley Matthews and J. J. Barea fueled the game-deciding rally that sent the Celtics home with a 10-10 record and sent the Mavs home with their sixth straight win at home.
Doncic started at point guard for the first time this season after Dennis Smith Jr. sat with a sprained right wrist and quickly put together a spectacular highlight reel. At the game’s outset, Mathews and Barnes each drilled a 3-pointer off a feed from Doncic.
A short time later, Doncic buried a 3-pointer of his own, and then got the ball to Barnes for yet another 3-pointer. Jordan then hammered home a dunk off a nifty pass from Doncic, who proceeded to take the crowd’s breath away by nailing back-to-back 3-pointers.
“There were highs and lows,” coach Rick Carlisle said in describing Doncic’s 15-point, eight-assist performance. “There were a lot of positives and there were some situations where he was maybe a little overzealous trying to do a little too much, but that’s how you learn.
“He stayed with it, like all of our guys do, and in the end everybody had some kind of positive impact on this win.”
This is the second straight game Barnes has connected on five 3-pointers in a game. He was 5-of-8 from 3-point range in Wednesday’s victory over Brooklyn, and against the Celtics he was 5-of-7 from downtown.
“I’m just sticking with it and continuing to get the shots,” said Barnes, who scored 20 points. “Those are the ones that come in the offense, so you just got to take them, and I’ve been good about it lately.”
J. J. Barea had 20 points and eight assists, and Jordan collected 14 points and 13 rebounds and registered his 12th double-double of the season. Meanwhile, Matthews, who missed the previous two games with a strained left hamstring, returned and scored 15 points.
Last week the Mavs defeated the two-time defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors. And a week later they defeated a Celtics team that advanced to last year’s Eastern Conference Finals.
“It’s fun, especially when you beat a team like that here at home,” Barea said. ”It’s a great team, they’re physical and we got the best of them tonight, so we got to enjoy it.”
The Mavs led 32-26 after the first quarter, 59-56 at the half and 87-82 after the third quarter. They were in command of this game for the overwhelming majority of the night, and now they’re back to .500 while playing their best ball of the season before hitting the road to play in Houston in Wednesday.
“The way we were playing – I think we were 2-7 – and to be 9-9 right now it says a lot about this team and about this coaching staff and about these players,” Barea said. “We stayed together, we made adjustments and now we’re rolling.
“We’re playing some good basketball, we’re enjoying it, and we’re having fun out there, so we got to keep that going.”
NOTES: Dwight Powell won the NBA Cares Community Assist Award, the league announced on Saturday. Powell hosted A Night Of Hope last month, which was a fundraiser where cancer survivors could come and mingle and share their stories. The fundraiser raised over $600,000. “It’s a huge honor,” Powell said. “Hopefully it’ll bring some great positive attention to the cause. It’s a blessing to be in the position that I am to take advantage of the platform I have and try to help others, and to be recognized by the league is huge. Everyone down from (proprietor Mark) Cuban to the players, everyone thinks it’s their responsibility to take advantage of this platform that we have and use kind of this moment that we have in the league to the best of our advantage to affect change in a positive way in a community that’s given us so much.” Mavs guard J. J. Barea won the same award for the month of October last season for the work he did raising money to help the victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. On Powell, Barea said: “Great dude to hang out with, great dude to play with, great dude to be a part of this team. He’s one of those guys that really cares about other people, and if he’s able to help he’s going to help, and I see him doing it for the rest of his career. We’ve got some great guys here that outside of basketball are doing great things, and Dwight is one of those guys.”. .Boston coach Brad Stevens got to see a little bit of Luka Doncic when the Celtics defeated Real Madrid in a preseason game, 111-96, on Oct. 8, 2015. Doncic came off the bench in that game and scored one point, grabbed four rebounds, handed out one assist and blocked a shot. “You didn’t see much of him in that game, but you knew since he was 16 and on Real Madrid that he was special,” Stevens said. “He’s a guy that knows how to play. He stretches you from deep. He can post you if you’re smaller. He’s got all the savvy moves of older guys and the game seems awfully slow for him, like he can just kind of manipulate the game as it’s going along. He’s got a chance to be a really good player.”. .Dennis Smith Jr. missed practice Friday so he could return home to North Carolina for personal reasons. The second-year point guard also sat out Saturday’s game with a sprained right wrist. . .Dwight Powell missed Saturday’s game with a left knee effusion. Powell said he’s not sure how or when the injury occurred. It’s the third straight game Powell has missed. . .With 17.2 seconds left, DeAndre Jordan attempted a free throw after Marcus Smart was whistled for a technical foul. Jordan, who leads the Mavs in free throw shooting at 80.3 percent, missed the free throw.
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