React Results: Dallas will be above .500 at the trade deadline

Jan 30, 2023 - 6:42 PM

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In what’s turning into a weekly tradition, on Friday we asked whether or not the Dallas Mavericks would be above .500 or not by the NBA Trade Deadline, which is on February 9th.

The schedule doesn’t look too friendly for the Mavericks and adding to the pain is Luka Doncic’s ankle sprain adds a great deal of confusion (he’s listed as questionable for the Detroit game as of this writing). And yet, there’s apparently a great deal of hope going around.

Dallas sits at 26-25 at the moment, just one game above .500. They play Detroit tonight and while that looks like a win on paper, the Mavericks already fell to the Pistons once this season.

After that, the Mavericks play the New Orleans Pelicans at home. They’re suffering through the same kind of weird inconsistency Dallas is, despite having a deeper roster. That game is a toss up in my book. That Saturday night game on the road against the Golden State Warriors seems like a brutal game; the Warriors aren’t great this year but they do win at home and the Mavericks stink on the road. The Mavericks just lost to the Jazz, who they play after the Warriors, then they play the Los Angeles Clippers on the road again and on national television which means I expect Kawhi Leonard to play. He’s had the Dallas number lately. If Dallas goes 2-3 in these next five games, they’d be AT .500, and that seems rather likely when looking at the games on paper.

But we know these games aren’t played on paper. Dallas needs a healthy Doncic to anything and as if this point, they still have yet to win a game where he doesn’t play. The Mavericks need something to start working in their favor.

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