Despite the Dallas Mavericks falling on hard times by losing five out of their last six games heading into Thursday’s game against the Miami Heat, that hasn’t deterred some analysts from viewing them as a serious playoff threat.
On a recent episode of FS1’s First Things First , Nick Wright separated NBA contenders into several different tiers, and the Mavs fell into the “Terrifying… For A Series Or Two” tier alongside LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Terrifying for a series or two… LeBron, Luka, AD, Kyrie… Both of these teams for a week, for two weeks, for a month, even… can look awesome,” Wright said. “And you can feel like, ‘man, they have the best player on the court. They might have the best duo on the court.’ Can either of these teams win three straight series, let alone four straight series? The Lakers with their rotations and the lack of defense at time and the coaching. The Mavs with just an outright allergy to defense lately. The answer is probably not, but you don’t want to see them across from you in the bracket at any point.”
The Mavs haven’t been right since seeing their seven-game win streak snapped by the Indiana Pacers two weeks ago. Given that there’s a six-game gap between the Mavs and current the No. 11 seed Utah Jazz with just 20 games left, there’s a good chance that Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and company will at the very least make the Play-In Tournament.
However, if they can get their act together, the Mavs could still climb into the No. 5 or No. 6 seed. Dallas trails the current fifth-place New Orleans Pelicans by three games while having a tie in the regular-season head-to-head, and it trails the current sixth-place Phoenix Suns, who have the hardest remaining schedule in the league, by just two games while also owning the regular-season tiebreaker.
Doncic, Irving and the Mavs have all the pieces to be a “terrifying” playoff matchup for any opposing team, as Wright mentioned, but they must find a way to break out of their funk if they want to have the chance to prove him right.
