{"id":674049,"date":"2026-03-23T06:27:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/674049\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T06:27:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:27:35","slug":"mavericks-vs-warriors-3-things-before-dallas-hosts-a-shorthanded-golden-state-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/674049\/","title":{"rendered":"Mavericks vs. Warriors: 3 things before Dallas hosts a shorthanded Golden State"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Mavericks (23-48,\u00a014-22 Home) took the Los Angeles Clippers to overtime on Saturday<\/a> before falling 138-131 in a game that had no business being that close and (if you were watching) every reason to be exactly that close. These Mavericks don\u2019t fold. They don\u2019t mail it in. They play hard enough to make you forget, for stretches at a time, what the standings actually say. On Monday at 8:30 PM CT, they host the Golden State Warriors (33-38,\u00a014-23 Away), who arrive at the AAC without Stephen Curry, without Jimmy Butler, and without much to offer beyond Draymond Green\u2019s behavioral grab bag and Brandin Podziemski doing his best impression of a lead guard. Both teams have lost eight of their last ten. One of these losing streaks ends tonight. Let\u2019s look at three things before the Mavericks take on a familiar yet barely recognizable foe.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks are losing the right way<\/p>\n

Somewhere between sixth and seventh in the Tankathon<\/a> standings, Dallas sits with a 9.0% shot at the top pick in a loaded draft class\u2014behind Indiana, Washington, Brooklyn, Sacramento, and Utah, all of whom have more losses and, in several cases, seemingly more organizational intent to keep accumulating them. The NBA made that point explicitly in February<\/a>, when it fined the Jazz $500,000 and the Pacers $100,000 for what commissioner Adam Silver called \u201covert behavior that prioritizes draft position over winning.\u201d Pulling healthy stars in fourth quarters of close games. Sitting rotation players against medical advice. The league had seen enough.<\/p>\n

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The Mavericks are not engaged in such overly obvious shenanigans. Jason Kidd is playing as close to a winning rotation on any given night as he has available. Veterans including Washington, Gafford, Marshall, and Thompson are playing to win every night because that\u2019s who they are, not because the front office is choosing their level of competitive fire or minutes on the floor. PJ Washington is averaging 14.6 points and 6.9 rebounds since the start of March, and in the overtime loss to LA on Saturday put up 21 and nearly won it off an offensive rebound in the final seconds. Daniel Gafford came off the bench against Atlanta last Wednesday after a brief absence and went 9-for-10 from the field for 24 points in 22 minutes, which is the kind of performance that makes you wonder why his minutes are being managed at all. This is not Cooper Flagg and four guys standing around watching. There\u2019s real pride in this building, and it shows up every night even when the results don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

That duality\u2014proud of the fight, aware of the math\u2014is what it means to watch this team right now. Dallas sits eight games back of Indiana and two behind Utah in the loss column. They probably aren\u2019t moving up given how hard they are fighting but they aren\u2019t engineered to move down either, and there\u2019s something genuinely refreshing about that in a season where the race to the bottom has been uglier than usual.<\/p>\n

The cost of betting on aging stars<\/p>\n

Stephen Curry is 37 years old and, when healthy this season, has been almost absurdly good\u2014averaging 27.2 points, which only LeBron James has topped at that age in NBA history. The problem is the \u201cwhen healthy\u201d part. Curry has been out since January 30 with runner\u2019s knee, and in his absence the Warriors have gone 6-13. With him, they won 59% of their games. Without him, 32%.<\/p>\n

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Golden State made a calculated bet last season when they acquired Jimmy Butler, deciding that Curry\u2019s window\u2014however narrow it was getting\u2014was still worth pushing through. It was a reasonable bet. Butler tore his ACL in January. Curry went down two weeks later. Two pillars of the same window, lost in the same month.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks learned a version of this lesson themselves. Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis were supposed to form the bridge between the Luka era and whatever came next. Irving is missing this entire season during his ACL recovery and Davis was traded to Washington in a reset button maneuver. When you pin your hopes on players past thirty, availability is a variable, not a constant. Golden State found that out. Dallas found it out. The difference is Dallas now has a teenager who plays like he\u2019s been doing this for a decade, and Golden State has Draymond Green playing out the string of a dynasty that won its last ring four years ago.<\/p>\n

Curry is trending toward a return as early as Wednesday\u2019s home game against the Nets. Tonight in Dallas is likely one of his last absences. It\u2019s still not going to save the Warriors\u2019 season as I suspect they are out in the play-in or an early round exit if they advance to the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Four years is forever<\/p>\n

I just find it genuinely hard to believe that the 2022 Western Conference Finals<\/a> happened four years ago. I can still see Dorian Finney-Smith and Reggie Bullock ground down to a fine pumice like substance by the end of that series because Jason Kidd had no one else he trusted to defend opposing scorers. Brunson and Dinwiddie starting without Luka in Utah. Maxi Kleber hitting threes in the desert like he\u2019d been saving them all season. That whole run felt like the sky opening up\u2014like Dallas had finally turned a corner and the next decade was going to be something.<\/p>\n

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Four years later, here are the players from those two rosters still on their original teams who may see action in tonight\u2019s contest: Draymond Green.<\/a> Dwight Powell.<\/a> That\u2019s the list.<\/p>\n

Klay Thompson\u2014who scored 32 points and hit eight threes to close out these Mavericks in Game 5 of that series\u2014is now in a Dallas uniform, averaging 11.8 points in year two of a three-year deal on a team that has pivoted decisively away from anything he signed up for. He came here for a fifth ring. Luka got traded six months later. His contract runs through next season at $16.7 million and he may well be dealt in the offseason when whoever takes over as GM starts building their own thing around Cooper Flagg. We might be watching the final chapters of Klay Thompson\u2019s career, which is a strange thing to sit with.<\/p>\n

Part of this is just this old writer getting\u2026older. Time moves faster at 50 than it did at 40, and four years that should feel like four years somehow feels like eighteen months. But part of it is genuinely how completely these franchises have transformed. The Warriors went from dynasty to expensive construction project gasping for the stars to align for just one more run. The Mavericks went from Finals contender to full rebuild, skipping several steps along the way thanks to the decision maker at the time<\/a> who has Voldemort levels of popularity in Dallas.<\/p>\n

What hasn\u2019t changed is that these two teams still show up and compete. That\u2019s worth something, even in March, even with the standings looking the way they do.<\/p>\n

Where to watch<\/p>\n

The Mavericks and Warriors tip off at 8:30 PM CT from American Airlines Center on Monday. Watch on Peacock. Go Mavs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Mavericks (23-48,\u00a014-22 Home) took the Los Angeles Clippers to overtime on Saturday before falling 138-131 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[6071,495,676,7,860,670,1591,225,686,149,2619,7421,374,200,5991,479,164,4025,4024,113,423,20839,313,498,967,192,185,508,3000,6,671,114,8283,49166,986,573,2098,490,3209,255],"class_list":["post-674049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golden-state-warriors","tag-american-airlines-center","tag-anthony-davis","tag-atlanta","tag-basketball","tag-brandin-podziemski","tag-brooklyn","tag-brunson","tag-cooper-flagg","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-daniel-gafford","tag-dinwiddie","tag-dorian-finney-smith","tag-draymond-green","tag-dwight-powell","tag-golden-state","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-goldenstate","tag-goldenstatewarriors","tag-indiana","tag-jazz","tag-jerome-miron-imagn","tag-jimmy-butler","tag-klay-thompson","tag-kyrie-irving","tag-la-clippers","tag-lebron-james","tag-luka","tag-maxi-kleber","tag-nba","tag-nets","tag-pacers","tag-pj-washington","tag-reggie-bullock","tag-sacramento","tag-stephen-curry","tag-texas","tag-the-mavericks","tag-usa","tag-warriors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}