DALLAS, TX – The No. 4 seed Mavericks will host the Utah Jazz in Dallas on Saturday at noon as Dallas has home court advantage for the first round of the playoffs. With Luka’s status on his injury finally answered, the Mavs are staying positive as they enter this game tomorrow morning without their superstar.
These two teams have been predicted to be playing against each other for a while now as they have been sitting in the No. 4 and No. 5 spot for a while now. Things got exciting after the All-Star break when Doncic was dropping 30-point games back-to-back putting Luka in the MVP conversation and putting Dallas in the win column.
Dallas had the opportunity to possibly make it to the No. 3 seed. They were battling the Golden State Warriors for the last month but ultimately the Warriors grabbed No. 3 having one less loss than the Mavs.
All things were going the Mavs way until the end of the third quarter in the last regular season game on the Sunday night. Luka went down with a left calf injury and since then his return has been in the TBD category. That answer was finally answered for us on Friday afternoon it was announced that Doncic will not play in game one and his return for game two is still in question.
With Doncic being out Utah will try to take that as an advantage and grab the first two games of the series. On Dallas’s end they are going to try to stay afloat on offense and rely heavily on guys like Jalin Brunson and Spencer Dinwiddie.
The biggest difference in the Mavs offense without Doncic is the fact that Doncic does a lot of pick and rolls to Dwight Powell and that has really worked for Dallas this season. Powell finished the regular season really strong for Dallas and he played in all 82 games for the Mavs this season.
All eyes will be on the Mavs tomorrow to see if they can produce without Doncic dropping 30. Tune in tomorrow at noon on ESPN for the matchup.
