Dallas lost this game in the huddle.
Mavericks fans have decided this was a robbery: the Spurs' size got a pass from the officials, and Victor Wembanyama camped in space he shouldn't have had. None of that shows up in the box score, in Dusty May's postgame comments, or in Kyrie Irving's. The two men who ran Dallas's offense in the final minute described a basketball problem. Their own words should end the debate.
What's not in dispute: the Mavericks fell behind by 19 points in the second half on the road against a Spurs team that's now won six straight, and they clawed all the way back to have the ball with a chance to win it at the end. That comeback was real and impressive. Dallas still had the exact possession it needed and gave it away.
Rating
RatingOn the final play out of a timeout, May drew up a drive for Irving against De'Aaron Fox with Cooper Flagg cutting from the corner. May said it himself afterward: he wanted a drive to the middle because Dallas had a spacing advantage, and Irving "probably attacked a little bit too late." Irving's turnaround from 15 feet missed as the clock ran out. That came after he'd already pulled up from 27 feet with over 40 seconds still on the clock on the previous possession, a shot nobody needed to take with that much time left. Irving went 9-of-27 from the field for the night. Twenty-seven shots from one player in a one-point loss is a pattern.
And the pattern is damning because of who wasn't shooting. Cooper Flagg had a miserable first half, caught fire after the break, and kept making shots when it mattered most, finishing with a strong, efficient second-half stretch that made him the best option Dallas had on the floor down the stretch. He ended up standing in the corner as a decoy on the possession that decided the game. May can talk about spacing and advantages all he wants: the advantage Dallas actually had in that building was the kid who'd just shot his way into the hottest hand in the gym, and the staff chose reputation over form.
RTGThe size argument matters. Dallas was without Dereck Lively, its 7-footer, and had to throw P.J. Washington at Wembanyama, who put up one of the most absurd stat lines you'll see this season: a career-high 52 points, 24 rebounds and 8 blocks, with a stretch before halftime that hasn't been matched in the league's modern play-by-play era. That's a real mismatch, and it explains how Dallas fell behind by 19 in the first place. It doesn't explain what happened once the game was tied and Dallas had the ball with the season on the line. Washington and Naji Marshall combined for over 40 points and kept Dallas in a game it had no business being in. The collapse at the end wasn't on them, and it wasn't on the referees. Nobody who covered the game, including May and Irving, raised officiating as an issue.
San Antonio needed a historic individual performance just to survive a 19-point meltdown of its own and escape by a single point. That's a real knock on the Spurs' defense. It doesn't mean Dallas got cheated. Conflating the two turns a legitimate complaint about a roster mismatch into an excuse for a coaching staff that iso'd its best scorer into the ground instead of trusting the guy who'd just made six of eight.
Irving called it "growing pains" and said he has to be better moving forward. He's right. Dusty May handed the ball to his best shooter with 2.5 seconds left instead of the player who'd just torched San Antonio for a stretch of makes, and that decision cost Dallas the game far more than anything a referee did.
