If there’s anything we’ve learned about the Golden State team in the last decade, it’s that you can’t out-Warriors the Warriors. Meaning, that you can’t outshoot the best shooting backcourt in the league. You don’t go to a duel at sunset, countdown from 10, and hope you have the quicker trigger. There’s a slim chance you make it out alive.
Unfortunately for the Dallas Mavericks, they found out the hard way that they can’t keep up in a shooting exhibition as the Warriors cruised to a 112-87 Game 1 to start the Western Conference Finals.
The Mavericks went 11-for-48 from deep for just 22.9 percent and 36 percent from the field overall. They attempted 19 triples right out of the gate but made only three – a telling sign for what was about to happen. A number of them were good looks but the ball simply refused to go through the net. As the Mavs missed, the Warriors capitalized. The home team shot better from both the 3-point line (10-for-29) and from the floor (56.1 percent).
“Of course, we can do things to be better but I think the first quarter we had a lot of open looks,” Dallas star Luka Doncic said postgame. “Second one too but then in the second half, we didn’t.”
“As a team, we didn’t shoot the ball great,” Doncic went on, assessing his team’s offensive woes. “We were 22 (percent) from 3, I think we gotta attack the paint more. We settled a lot of 3s today so we gotta attack the paint more.”
You can’t outshoot the Warriors so you might as well figure out a way to diversify your offense against them. Golden States’ defense may often take a backseat to how Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Jordan Poole shoot the basketball, but make no mistake, they are a championship-level defensive team.
Doncic had 18 points in the first half but proceeded to score just two more points in the last two quarters. He finished 6-for-18 from the field, 3-for-10 from beyond the arc, seven rebounds, and four assists. He accounted for seven of the Mavericks’ 13 turnovers.
“They were doing a good job on me, especially in the second half but I think I gotta be better,” Doncic said. “That’s on me. As a leader, I gotta be better for the whole group so that’s on me.”
Golden State deployed several schemes to cut the production of the Mavs’ go-to guy. Andrew Wiggins acted as the primary defender and he was flanked by Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. Center Kevon Looney’s presence in the middle also forced the Dallas guard to second guess a drive in the paint. It’s safe to say that the Warriors were more than prepared in their game plan to stifle Luka and the Mavericks.
Doncic said he wasn’t particularly surprised with the coverage but admitted the opposition did a good job to make it tough for him.
“I’ve faced different kinds of defenses a lot of times,” he said, mentioning a regular season game against the Charlotte Hornets where he saw various schemes thrown at him. “They threw a lot of different things. They played zone first then box-and-one, it was a lot of different coverages.”
As they say, it’s only the first game. The value of making adjustments and adapting game plans couldn’t be overstated. The Mavericks need to address all their weaknesses in order for this Western Conference Finals to really be a series.
“We gotta play better. We gotta play tougher,” Doncic said. “I said in the Phoenix series we gotta believe so the confidence is the same. It’s tough to win every game so some you’re gonna lose but the confidence stays the same.”
If this series was a Western movie and the two teams faced off in a shootout, the Mavs would be the first to go down if they met the Warriors head-on. Doncic and his team have to be the first ones to reach for the holster and shoot. They can’t rely solely on their perimeter shots. Instead, it’s probably best to think outside the box and find another way to win.
