Last night against the Houston Rockets, the Dallas Mavericks lost a game of basketball at home. There weren’t any signature performances. There were no heroics from MVP candidate James Harden, nor was there any noteworthy box scores to know about.
But once again, a good but not great Mavs team lost to a team with winning record. At this point in the season, games like last night’s loss to the Rockets — a game where Dallas led for most of the way — felt all too familiar to a fan base that’s gotten used to coming up short in the most important games.
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At 46-30, the Mavericks are an very good team. They have a very good starting five, they’ve won 60 percent of their games and they join the other seven teams in the Western Conference in the fact that at various points this season, they’ve looked like contenders.
But the bad taste of last night’s loss against a Rockets team on the second night of a back-to-back is nothing new. More and more, it’s looking like the No. 2 seed is the place to be in the West. Why? Because that guarantees the easiest first round matchup in the conference, a seven-game series against these very Mavs.
It’s nothing personal, Mavs fans. But it’s time to take a look at the overwhelming evidence that confirms how your team has become the weakest link in the West.
Note: Ok, so maybe the Oklahoma City Thunder are actually the weakest link in the West, but we knew as soon as Kevin Durant went down they weren’t contenders anymore. For the sake of discussion, we’re excluding OKC from this conversation and focusing on how the Mavs are the weak link among teams that still have realistic title aspirations.
Next: No. 5