The Mavericks entered Thursday night’s road game against the Oklahoma City Thunder as winners of four straight. They were on the second night of a back-to-back but only the second game back from the All-Star Break. Whenever news came down late in the afternoon that both Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis would be scratched from the lineup, it was incredibly frustrating.

Neither Doncic or Porzingis left the court due to an injury during Wednesday’s win over the Spurs, but both missed the 116-108 loss in OKC as the Dallas role players simply didn’t have enough to win without the team’s two stars.

While this one particular game is unlikely to wreck Dallas’ entire season, it’s still an absolute head-scratcher for coach Rick Carlisle and whoever else might be in charge of making these types of decisions for Doncic and Porzingis. Simply put, it was the wrong decision. Here’s why:

Neither Doncic or Porzingis is seriously hurt in any way whatsoever 
If they were, we would have seen it last night or their injuries would have been listed as something besides “ankle injury” (which just means a little sore in this resting scenario) and “injury management.” If this were a playoff game, both would have been out there for 35-40 minutes. Since it was a game in mid-March, rest up! Nah, you didn’t just have seven days between games. No biggie.

The Mavericks aren’t good enough to think they can casually win a game without Luka Doncic OR Kristaps Porzingis 
Then they went ahead and held both of them out? Having watched all of Thursday’s misleadingly close loss to the Thunder, it was clear that the Mavericks will likely never beat anyone without Doncic/Porzingis with the roster they currently have. The rest of the NBA is way damn talented for you to be trotting out the team they did tonight and think you can get away with it. It’s insulting to the Thunder and it comes across as some combination of arrogant, naive and just plain dumb when they hold out their two best players for non-serious injuries.

This team’s record is now 19-17, we’re not talking about the 95-96 Bulls trying to win a game without Jordan. Play your best damn players when you’re in the middle of a playoff race.

Their upcoming schedule is brutal and they absolutely needed to pick up the W against a lesser team tonight 
Here are the Mavericks upcoming games:

3/13: @ Nuggets
3/15: vs Clippers
3/17: vs Clippers
3/19: @ Blazers
3/21: @ Blazers

Wouldn’t it be nice to be three games over .500 heading into this stretch instead of two? I would say optimistically that you’re going 2-3 in that stretch. That’s not even a knock on the Mavericks, that’s just a really hard five game stretch! That’s why it was so important to win tonight to add some padding for the eventual rough patch you’re headed for.

Every season has ups and downs, I just down understand a self-inflicted down like tonight.

I’m not questioning that Luka has a sore ankle, but I do 150% question if it was sore enough to keep him out of a meaningful game tonight. The Mavericks are not just cruising to a playoff spot here. If the season ended today, they’d be playing in the new play-in tournament and possibly not even getting a first round playoff series if they had a bad couple of games.

Again, tonight’s one single loss to Oklahoma City doesn’t blow up the season, it was just so very frustrating because it just feels like it didn’t need to happen. Oh well. On to the next one. The Mavs head to the Mile High City on take on the Nuggets starting at 9 PM on Saturday night.