The Mavericks have won 8 of 9 games, including last night's win over Portland where Luka Doncic returned to action. Did the team answer any questions you had about them in Luka's absence? How impressive have bench players like Quentin Grimes and Spencer Dinwiddie been?
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00:00The win last night for the Mavericks, um, was nice considering the way it started was
00:20what 29, 25. And I was like, man, they look sloppy again to start the game. And then they
00:25turned it on in the second quarter. I think when they took out Luca. Yeah. And I was
00:30like, God, he just still looks bad. He ended up having a great game. The first eight minutes
00:35of the game, he did not look very good, but I was super impressed with that. When they
00:41had four of their top eight guys out, you had Kyrie taking a night off clay Thompson
00:46dealing with, it sounds like plantar fasciitis, which is not good. I was going to bug him
00:50all season. Yeah. And then you had Derek Lively, I believe taking a rest day and then nausea
00:55Marshall, uh, taking a rest day. I don't think there's anything to be concerned about
00:59there. I think, I think besides clay Thompson, I think all of those players will be back
01:03tomorrow night against a really good Memphis team who surprised everybody with their record
01:07this year, especially with John Morant missing sometime this year is I'm still just so impressed
01:13that they've won eight out of nine games with Luca missing the majority of those games.
01:19And then when Luca comes back, you give Kyrie a night off. Derek Lively gets a night off.
01:25She, Marshall gets a night off. I get Portland's not a very good team. Portland has a better
01:28record than you would think. You'd think they'd be like a, I don't know, a three and 20 team.
01:33They're eight and 13 right now, but I'm just impressed with Quentin Grimes stepping up.
01:40Spencer Dinwiddie stepping up yesterday. Hell even I'll give flowers this way. Dwight Powell
01:45for him having to come off the bench and play the backup center role a little bit last night
01:51because of Derek Lively being out. And I thought he had a productive game for his ability.
01:58And he gave you minutes that you needed last night. So for the Mavs to miss four out of
02:02their eight major guys and to still come away with a victory on the road was a great win.
02:06And to look at the stretch to Mike, like they're averaging, it's got to be over 120 points
02:12a game in this stretch because earlier in the season, they were like, Hey, one 10 is
02:16a pretty good number, you know? And now it's like, they're on this, Hey, we're scoring
02:20lots of points. Now they're not limiting everybody to the lowest points, but this is a stretch
02:25where you expected maybe a couple of losses here, especially without Luca and they've
02:29only had one.
02:30And that was to the heat beating Denver's big a couple of these other teams. You're
02:34like, all right, they're bad teams, but yeah, now this, you talked about it last week, they're
02:38playing hard and like, that's all you can really ask is they're giving that effort in
02:43the regular season without Luca. And now that's like, that's paying off for them as their
02:48record continues to climb. They were 10th at some point last week, and now they're fifth.