Dallas Basketball

Mavs vs. Bulls Preview: Dallas Attempts Bounce Back From Free-Throw Nightmare

Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks will try to get back in the win column on Saturday night, as they face the Chicago Bulls on the second night of a back-to-back.

Dalton Trigg

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The Dallas Mavericks should be entering Saturday night's matchup with the Chicago Bulls celebrating their best win of the season. However, thanks to extremely poor free-throw shooting and defensive execution, Dallas is coming into United Center fresh off a disappointing 106-105 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks.

“It starts with me," said Luka Doncic, who personally shot 4-10 from the stripe. "[I] gotta make those free throws. [The] locker room is tough right now, because we had the game. We had a win in our pocket against the Bucks. We gotta make our free throws.”

Winning on the second night of a back-to-back is something the Mavs are more than capable of achieving, but they've only got about 18 hours from when Friday night's game ended to when Saturday's game tips off. Heavy legs could become a factor, as Dallas is facing Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan, who have had three days of rest since their 115-111 win over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday.

The Bulls enter Saturday's matchup with a disappointing 10-14 record, but we all know how the Mavs have struggled against struggling teams this season. Dallas will try to avoid falling back down to .500 with back-to-back losses.

Here's everything else you need to know about tonight's game:

RECORDS: Dallas Mavericks (13-12), Chicago Bulls (10-14)

WHEN: Saturday, December 10, 2022 – 7:00 p.m. CT

WHERE: United Center (Chicago, IL)

TV: Bally Sports Southwest, NBA League Pass

RADIO: 97.1 The Freak, 99.1 FM Zona MX (Spanish)

ODDS: The Mavs are  -point underdogs to the Bulls.

NEXT UP: The Mavs go back home for a three-game homestand that begins on Monday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

FINAL WORD: “I’ll probably be drug tested the next day," said Doncic of his monstrous dunk over Jrue Holiday in transition on Friday night.

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Dalton Trigg
DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.

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