After scoring 16 straight points for the Dallas Mavericks on an absolutely scorching-hot run, Christian Wood found himself on the bench late against the Phoenix Suns. It was a surprising decision, to say the least, from Mavs head coach Jason Kidd, and in the end, it may have backfired on Dallas, with the Suns escaping with a 107-105 victory in their season-opener.
For his part, Wood did his bit to play down his controversial benching against the Suns. The new Mavs big man said that he needs “to build the trust with this team” — a sentiment that Kidd seemed to have echoed in his post-game comments (via Dwain Price of Mavs.com):
“We were going a little bit offense-defense and just seeing how that was going to go,” Kidd said. “I wanted to see, understanding, with Maxi out there defensively. And then also offensively, being able to stretch (the defense), so we don’t lose anything there.
“And then C-Wood, offensively, we wanted to see how he handled it. And then defensively, coming down the stretch we wanted to see a couple of minutes there from him.”
It was Wood who pretty much kept the Mavs alive as the Suns went on a furious third-quarter comeback run. Thanks to Wood's heroics, Dallas was able to hold off Phoenix. With a little less than seven minutes remaining in the game, however, Kidd decided to pull Wood off the floor in favor of Maxi Kleber.
The Suns ended up coming all the way back from being down by 22 points in the third quarter.
Despite his rather contentious decision, however, Kidd remains adamant about his current rotation strategy:
“We’ll see who does well in what situation, and we’ll put guys in different situations and see how they handle it and go from there,” Kidd said. “I think fantasy basketball people are excited. We’ll see what happens. It should be fun.”
Simply put, Wood has not yet earned the right to close out games at this point. It seems that Kidd is more than happy to make on the fly decisions as he determines his best lineups.
For his part, however, Wood isn't crying about it. He's just keeping his head down while also admitting that the Mavs need to work on a few things if they hope to contend for the title this year:
“Coming out in the second half we knew they were going to punch us in the mouth in the second half, and they did just that,” Wood said. “Especially with the good teams — playing against the playoff teams — you have to know how to take care of the ball.
“Overall, we did some great things out there (against Phoenix) as a team. It’s just the little things that we have to fix.”
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