DALLAS — Little else seemingly has gone right early this season, but the Mavericks on Sunday afternoon improved their home record to 3-0 with a 105-99 victory over Sacramento.
That makes seven straight home regular-season wins dating to last season’s two losses to the Kings during a six-day span in late-April and early May.
On Sunday, playing without Kristaps Porzingis for the third straight game, the Mavericks (4-2) had 23 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds from Luka Doncic and quality contributions from off-season acquisitions Frank Ntilikina, Reggie Bullock and Sterling Brown.
The Kings, who entered the game with a 3-0 road record, sliced away at a 15-point first-quarter deficit and were within 92-89 after a Buddy Hield 3-pointer with 4:53 left. But a Doncic 3-pointer, followed by a Dorian Finney-Smith dunk, pushed the lead to a more comfortable margin.
Ntilikina finished with 12 points, three rebounds, two assists and a steal in 21 minutes. Bullock scored seven points, five of them late in the third quarter after Sacramento briefly had taken its first lead.
Already short-handed Dallas became further depleted when Porzingis’ starting lineup replacement, Maxi Kleber, suffered a lower back strain while scoring on an alley-oop seven minutes into the game.
Kleber’s basket gave the Mavericks a 24-11 lead. His absence clearly was felt as Sacramento whittled the deficit to 53-47 at halftime and took its first lead, 60-59, on a Harrison Barnes dunk four minutes into the second half.
The Mavericks held a slim 68-66 lead with 3:53 left in the third quarter when Doncic exited for a rest, replaced by Ntilikina.
Instead of losing more ground, though, Dallas extended its lead to 82-72 as Ntilikina and Bullock scored five points apiece to end the third quarter.
Early in the fourth quarter, Brown sank a timely 3-point to extend Dallas’ lead to 89-77.
Porzingis missed his third straight game with lower back tightness. He’s now missed half of Dallas’ games this season. And in his three seasons as a Maverick he has played in only 103 (64%) of a possible 160 regular-season games.
“We’ll just take it day to day, and so hopefully he feels better today and tomorrow,” said coach Jason Kidd, whose team next plays on Tuesday, at home against Miami.
Kidd was asked whether Porzingis just experiencing bad injury luck.
“I don’t know if it’s bad luck,” he said. “You know, he is 7-3. And so it’s just the cards are dealt and you got to deal with them. And we want him to be healthy. When he was playing, he was playing wait for us. So hopefully, this is just one little small speed bump to overcome and get ready for him to come back and have the success that we had when he was on the floor.”
