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Falling down the dreaded 0-2 series hole in the 2022 NBA Playoffs is not exactly a death sentence. But it could feel that way when the team that owns that kind of series lead is the Golden State Warriors, who are now two wins away from booking a return trip to the NBA Finals after successfully pulling a rabbit out of a hat and winning Game 2 of the 2022 Western Conference finals against Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks Friday night to the tune of 126-117 score. The Mavs have lost by a total of 34 points through just two games in the series. Sure, they lost just by nine points in Game 2, but they were also up by as many as 19 points.
The Warriors look un-killable. It did not matter that the Mavs were hotter than molten lava in the first half of Friday’s contest; the Warriors found a way to erase a big lead just like they almost always whenever they stumble into that predicament.
As dim as it looks right now for the Mavericks, the fact remains that they’re still very much in it to come back alive in the series. They did not get this far just to bend over and let the Warriors dominate them for an entire round. There’s no surrender in this bunch of Mavericks, who have at least these three reasons to believe why they will be able to turn things around following a heart-wrenching Game 2 loss to Stephen Curry and the Warriors.
Why Luka Doncic, Mavs aren't dead yet after Game 2 loss to the Warriors
3. The Mavs have overcome this series deficit against the best team of the regular season
This is perhaps the most obvious reason why the Mavericks can’t be ruled out just yet in this series. Back in the second round, almost every sign is blinking and pointing to an inevitable Western Conference finals showdown between the Warriors and the Phoenix Suns when the latter took the first two games of the series in dominant fashion. In Game 1, the Suns rode on the shoulders of Deandre Ayton, who absolutely exposed Dallas’ lack of rim protection. Ayton mowed down whoever it was covering him to finish the game with a team-high 25 points on an excellent 12/20 shooting from the floor to lead Phoenix to a 121-114 win. In the following game, Ayton scored just nine points but the Suns came away with an even more decisive victory, 129-109.
At that point, not a few Mavs fans had already started writing their eulogies for their team’s season. Chris Paul and the Suns had the red carpet to the conference finals being prematurely rolled out. But the Mavs refused to give up and won four of the next five games, punctuated by a shocking 123-90 annihilation of the Suns in Phoenix, no less. The Suns and the Warriors are different teams, but the Mavs managing to pull off a successful comeback against Phoenix in the second round – a team that went 32-9 at home in the regular season – speaks volumes about the strong stuff this Dallas team is made off. Kevon Looney is not Deandre Ayton. If the Mavs solved Ayton, they should also find a solution to not just for Looney but for the rest of the Warriors.
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2. “Series has not started yet”
As the popular sports cliche goes, “a series doesn't start until a team wins on the road.” Since losing Game 1 of the first round against the Utah Jazz, the Mavs have gone undefeated in five games on their home floor. The Suns went 0-3 at the American Airlines Center back in the second round. Then the Mavs became the only team in that series to win on the road by embarrassing the Suns in Phoenix in an anti-climactic Game 7 that was really over before halftime. The Mavs are hard to crack when they’re at home, which is the case for most teams in the NBA. But in this matchup, it’s got more meaning because the Warriors are winless in Dallas in all of their last three trips to American Airlines Center. They are also 4-1 straight up in their last five games there and 5-5 in the last 10.
1. Two words: Luka Doncic
Doncic scored just 20 points in Game 1 versus the Warriors, but if Golden State thought it finally had the formula to slow him down, the Slovenian responded to the challenge in Game 2, bad shoulder and all, dropping 42 points on 52.2 percent shooting from the field and 50 percent from behind the arc. He also had eight assists and only a couple of turnovers despite his high usage rate.
No matter how the Warriors plan against Doncic, he will have a big impact on the Mavs. Notwithstanding the losses to the Warriors, Doncic’s teammates are responding better to the playmaking of the superstar, with Jalen Brunson and Reggie Bullock coming up with ample scoring support unlike in the early goings of the Phoenix series. The Mavs will go as far as where Luka Doncic takes them and in him, Dallas trusts he can tow them to the grandest stage of the NBA.
