DALLAS — The Mavericks will finish the first half of the regular season Wednesday night against the Thunder and then enter the All-Star break with plenty of in-house questions:
How concerning is Kristaps Porzingis’ lengthening injury history? What moves are best ahead of the late-March trade deadline? Will the defensive focus from the offseason soon manifest into consistent production?
Look at the macro level at the midpoint, and the NBA faces a major uncertainty, too:
After the league postponed 31 first-half games because of COVID-19 issues while playing without a bubble, will the 2020-21 regular season require an asterisk for competitive fairness?
The Mavericks may be the organizational poster child for first-half inequity.
Dallas leads the NBA in player games missed due to COVID-19 protocols (41 games between five Mavericks) but ranks in the bottom half of the league with just one virus-related postponement.
While outcomes in the early weeks of a season don’t often correlate directly to playoff fate, the timing, breadth and the NBA’s approach to the Mavericks’ January COVID-19 outbreak perpetuated shortcomings that could hamper Dallas’ postseason push in the coming months.
“We’re coming up on almost a year since the hiatus hit last March 11,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “There’s been a lot of adjusting. There’s been a lot of pivoting. Everyone’s had to be light on their feet. But really, you know, you haven’t heard an exorbitant amount of bitching and complaining in the NBA, and it’s pretty amazing if you think about it.”
One mid-January day likely made the difference between the Mavericks being one of the NBA teams hit hardest by the pandemic — at least by on-court statistics — and Dallas having a several-game pause for contact tracing and roster evaluation.
Before Jan. 12, the NBA rarely postponed games if teams had at least eight players available after positive test and close-contact individuals were identified.
That’s why the Mavericks played the Magic on Jan. 9, the day after their outbreak started during a road trip and Jalen Brunson, Josh Richardson and Dorian Finney-Smith remained quarantined in Denver.
The NBA postponed Dallas’ next game — Jan. 11 vs. the Pelicans — after Maxi Kleber and Dwight Powell also tested positive, but otherwise left the Mavericks’ schedule intact because they always had more than eight players available.
The Mavericks’ outbreak came during the NBA’s worst stretch for COVID-19 cases, and during a harrowing point of the pandemic nationwide. A season-high 13 players, including four Mavericks, tested positive from Jan. 6-13.
The next week, 11 more.
The NBA updated its health and safety protocols Jan. 12 to enact stricter rules for activity outside team settings and also started to postpone teams’ schedules in chunks, rather than by single games, in response to positive tests.
The Mavericks’ COVID-19 issues weren’t as widespread as the Wizards’ seven-player outbreak, for example, but the NBA postponed six Washington contests from Jan. 13-22, so the Wizards lost just 22 player games.
Memphis (five postponements from Jan. 20-27) and San Antonio (four from Feb. 15-22) also had consecutive games postponed at the start of their team outbreaks, though they also never fell below the minimum roster threshold.
“We were unfortunately the teachers that you probably should cancel games,” said 76ers head coach Doc Rivers, whose team has also postponed only one game despite players missing a combined 27 for COVID-19 protocol.
“It affected us, obviously, and it affected the Mavs. You can’t get it back now.”
The specific players quarantined were perhaps even more influential for the Mavericks.
The absences of starters Finney-Smith (nine games), Richardson (nine) and Kleber (11) meant Dallas played without its three best defenders for over two weeks. Brunson (four games) and Powell (eight games) also left voids in the rotation.
Without a full roster, the Mavericks endured a six-game losing streak, tied for the third-longest in Carlisle’s tenure, and waited until Feb. 1 to start their ideal lineup for the first time all season.
Divide the Mavericks’ first 33 games into thirds, and they went 6-5 to start the season, then 3-8 during the bulk of their COVID-19 outbreak, and 8-3 since.
Other pandemic-stricken teams include the 2020 NBA Finals participant Heat, which lost 30 player games to COVID-19 protocol, including 10 for star Jimmy Butler, and the Celtics, who endured an early-January outbreak with just one postponement.
The three — all preseason playoff picks — now have records hovering around .500, comprising an undesirable club of first-half underachievers that could warrant more ‘What if?’ questions as postseason positions become a bigger focus after the All-Star break.
“I hope we all stay healthy and we have more time as a team, as a collective, to practice, play games, get rhythm and all that stuff,” Kleber said. “It’s not perfect, but we’re getting better.”
