After slicing through the Clippers’ defense, again, to score his 41st and 42nd points of a masterpiece performance, Luka Doncic raised his arms in the air, looked around American Airlines Center and soaked in the moment.
Another big one for him — and the Mavericks, who collectively did a lot of growing up in Wednesday’s night’s 105-89 victory over the Clippers, witnessed nationally by an ESPN audience.
Counting regular season and playoff games, Doncic’s 42-point, 9-assist, 6-rebound performance Wednesday was the 11th 40-point outing of his career. Three have been against the Clippers, two of them in the Disney World bubble during last year’s first-round playoff series.
The Mavericks got 15 points from Tim Hardaway Jr., 14 from Josh Richardson and 11 points and 13 rebounds from Kristaps Porzingis.
“A high-level opponent,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “A high-level opportunity."
Playing without one of their best defenders, Dorian Finney-Smith, who celebrated the birth of a son earlier Wednesday, the Mavericks nonetheless clamped down defensively during the final three periods.
Dallas allowed Los Angeles to shoot 12-of-22 and fell behind 29-24 after one quarter, but in the second and third periods allowed 36.7% shooting (17-of-46) and outscored the Clippers 53-42.
Entering Wednesday, the Mavericks were a combined 1-7 against the Western Conference’s top four teams: Utah (0-2), Phoenix (0-3), the Lakers (0-1) and Clippers (1-1).
Dallas’ lone victory was the 51-point lashing it gave the Clippers two days after Christmas, which certainly looked to be an outlier in more ways than one. The aforementioned seven losses were by a combined 75 points, including by 23 to the Lakers and a combined 31 in the two Utah defeats.
It certainly didn’t help when the Mavericks’ rotation was gutted by COVID-19 in January, but as Carlisle alluded to Wednesday, perhaps another factor has been overlooked.
Though Carlisle describes the Mavericks as a “young veteran” squad, it’s still on the youthful side. The roster’s average age (26.3) matches the NBA average and is 15th in the league. The Clippers’ average age, by comparison, is 29.2, highest in the league, with considerable playoff experience, too.
“We’re learning things every day,” Carlisle said. “It’s ongoing. This team has come a long way in the last two years, really, since they’ve been together and gone through a lot — not only with basketball season but with everything that’s come with a unique set of circumstances for everyone this year.”
Carlisle called Wednesday’s game “a high-level challenge, but this is how you get better, and there’s a lot to be said about the disposition and attitude that you take into a game like this.”
For the fifth straight game since the All-Star break, the Mavericks trailed after one period, but the five-point deficit was an improvement from the early holes of previous games. Dallas was down by 14 against the Clippers on Monday, trailed 10-0 to Denver, and 31-14 against Oklahoma City.
“We don’t have to have a big lead or win the quarter, but we’ve got to avoid 10-plus-point deficits,” Carlisle said. “That gets you digging out of a hole over the period of 48 minutes.”
The Mavericks took the lead during a strong second quarter in which Doncic scored 11 points, Richardson scored 10 and Hardaway seven.
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