The Dallas Mavericks rebounded from a tough loss in their opener with a resounding win over the Toronto Raptors on the road Saturday night to give Jason Kidd his first official win as head coach of the Mavs.
Luka Doncic led the way with 27 points. Doncic also added 12 assists and nine rebounds, coming just one rebound shy of his 37th career triple-double. Afterward, Coach Kidd lauded Luka’s ability to do it all for the Mavs and put his teammates in position to succeed when defenses weren’t allowing him to do so himself.
We have a very talented player in Luka, who starts everything,” Jason said. “With him at the top, being able to read who is open, he’s a great quarterback. Guys were setting screens higher, trying to give him some airspace and he was aggressive. I know he probably felt like he could’ve made a few more baskets, but I thought he played a really good game. He found the open guy, he looked at the basket when he had an opportunity to score, so I thought he had an incredible game.”
With Luke playing both scorer and facilitator, everybody else had a great night as well. Tim Hardaway Jr. chipped in 25 points, including seven threes, and all five Dallas starters scored in double figures. The Mavericks also survived an early onslaught by Toronto, indicating perhaps some carryover from Dallas’ second half struggles against Atlanta in the opener. The Raptors used a 14-0 run in the first six minutes to open up a 16-2 lead before Doncic made his first bucket of the night to stop the bleeding. But the Mavs regrouped and had the deficit down to seven by the end of the first and six at halftime. They then came out aggressively in the third and used a 12-o run of their own to build a 69-62 lead and never trailed the rest of the way.
“It’s chemistry and accountability, things that we’ve talked about, character, trust in one another. That group in there, they’ve been together, they’ve been through battles,” Coach Kidd said. “It’s a 48-minute game. You don’t lose the game in the first three minutes, in the first six minutes. We were tested in Atlanta and we didn’t respond well. I thought the guys responded well here tonight on the road. It’s hard to win in this league, so to win on the road, that’s big.”
Watch the full postgame presser from Jason’s first win as Mavericks coach below.