Three takeaways from Mavs primetime dud in Boston

It’s a busy weekend for Dallas sports fans. You have the Dallas Cowboys hosting the Seattle Seahawks tomorrow night at Jerry World, but their basketball buddies have two games against the Eastern Conference elite. That started tonight when the Boston Celtics played host to our Dallas Mavericks on ESPN.

Much of the talk has been about rookie sensation Luka Doncic, winner of back-to-back Rookie of the Month for the Western Conference. On top of that, he currently is in 2nd place for Western Conference front court vote getters, behind only LeBron James.

The Mavericks had a good opportunity to take the first game of their back to back road trip as Kyrie Irving sat out again. Ultimately, the Mavericks fell 114-93.

Ice Cold From Beyond The Arc

Brrrr…was it rough to watch the Mavericks shoot the rock tonight. One could say that they consistently leaned on the long ball to dig themselves out of the large deficits throughout the game, but even when the Mavericks got the lead down to one, they continued to shoot from distance, despite struggling throughout.

The Mavericks at one point missed 10 straight three pointers, and concluded the game shooting 11-44 from long range, while the Celtics shot 21-45, accounting for 30 more points from that distance.

Luka Doncic did however, throw in this little rare highlight of the night:

Luka Doncic dazzles and banks in the 3 to beat the halftime buzzer! 😮

At the break on ESPN:#MFFL 51#CUsRise 58 pic.twitter.com/c5CpPssWVK

— NBA (@NBA) January 5, 2019

Where is Maxi? 

Am I missing something here? To me, this seemed like a game that had Maxi’s name all over it, but for some reason he was a “DNP-Coaches Decision”.

As of late, Coach Rick Carlisle has received a good amount of backlash from MFFL’s, and while I try to give him the benefit of the doubt, I just don’t understand some of his decisions night in and night out.

Carlisle leaned heavily on his starting unit, because the bench clearly didn’t want to show up and play tonight, but I felt like Maxi could’ve had an impact against the smaller Celtics front court.

The Hand Off of the Torch

Over the last 20 years, we’ve all been spoiled by the man out of West Germany. The Boston Celtics faithful seemed to have grasped that this could have been their last shot at witnessing one of the all-time greats, and they wanted to make sure he felt appreciated.

Boston fans gave Dirk Nowitzki a standing ovation 🙏 pic.twitter.com/zii4NlFzIR

— ESPN (@espn) January 5, 2019

While it’s so great to see this man still donning the same jersey he entered this league in, it’s clear that this is no longer his show, and each night, Luka Doncic reminds everyone that MFFL’s everywhere are in good hands.

Sure, Nowitzki gets his fair share of media attention, but this is the Luka Doncic show. He has the flare for the dramatics. He’s polished, marketable (Matador, right Mark?), and a big ticket when the Mavericks come to a city near you.