DALLAS — On the Mavericks’ list of 2020-21 season goals, winning the Southwest Division championship probably wasn’t close to uppermost in importance.
But when Dallas clinched that title Friday night by routing Cleveland, 110-90, in American Airlines Center, it qualified as a moment to be savored, if only briefly.
The division title is meaningful not so much because it’s merely the fourth in the franchise’s 41-season history, mindboggling though that factoid is, but because of how far this year’s has come.
Also, depending how the regular season’s final five games play out, the title could prove useful because it would be the first tie-breaker should Dallas find itself in a three-way tie.
“Listen, I think it’s something that’s always worthwhile,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said of the division title. “It shows that you’re the best team in your region of the league. ... It’s big. It’s big and we’ll take it.”
Thanks to nine victories in their last 11 games, it appears less likely that the Mavericks (39-28) will need the extra insurance, but in this season of COVID-19 and utter unpredictability, one never knows.
With Friday’s win, fifth-place Dallas temporarily took a 1 1/2-game lead over both the Lakers and Blazers, who played late Friday night in Portland in what amounted to a win-win scenario for Dallas. Either Portland or Los Angeles was assured of ending the night two games behind the Mavericks.
Dallas owns the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Lakers, but not Portland. For Dallas to fall from fifth and out of the coveted top six and an automatic playoff berth — thereby avoiding the play-in tournament between seventh-through-10th-place teams — it would have to get passed by both Portland and Los Angeles.
With Friday’s victory, Carlisle surpassed Cotton Fitzsimmons as the 15th-winningest coach in NBA history, with 833 victories. Before the game, Carlisle was asked his feelings about the play-in tournament.
“My position on it is this: If it’s in place and it’s gonna happen, it’s great,” he said. “You’ve got to embrace it. If you’re in a situation where you end up playing in a play-in tournament, that’s going to be a great experience.
“Now that said, everyone’s trying to avoid it. Everybody wants that — I don’t know what they’re going to call it now, going forward, a guaranteed playoff position, the one-through-six.”
Luka Doncic (24 points), Tim Hardaway Jr. (20 points) and Josh Richardson’s (18 points) led Friday’s blowout, but none played more than 28 minutes or in the fourth quarter, which bodes well for when these teams meet again Sunday in Cleveland.
The Cavaliers (21-46) will carry a nine-game losing streak into that game. None of Dallas’ remaining opponents — Memphis, New Orleans, Toronto and Minnesota — are above .500.
Before Friday, the only division titles in franchise history came in 1986-87, 2006-2007 and 2009-10. That’s the downside of playing in the same division as San Antonio, which has won 20 titles since 1980, and Houston, which has won seven titles during that duration.
Richardson called the division title “cool, but we want to start winning things for real here in a couple of weeks. I think that’s the fitting goal here.”
