Dallas Basketball

'Falling Flat': Luka Doncic's Mavs Flop at Hawks In NBA Opener, 113-87

After a promising preseason, Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks fell flat in their NBA season opener on the road against Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks, 113-87

Dalton Trigg

For Dallas Mavericks fans, NBA Opening Night couldn’t have been much more fun, at least in theory, than having your team play against the Atlanta Hawks, given the Luka Doncic vs. Trae Young debates that have swirled since that fateful NBA Draft night in 2018. 

On Thursday, though, it was Young's Hawks who came out on top over Doncic's Mavericks in the latest installment of the forged rivalry, as Atlanta out-gunned Dallas, 113-87. 

“It was a terrible game,” Doncic said. “We couldn’t make nothing. But 81 to go.”

Doncic finished the game with 18 points on 6-of-17 shooting to go with 11 rebounds and seven assists. Off the bench, Jalen Brunson was the Mavs second-leading scorer with 17 points to go with three rebounds and three assists. 

Kristaps Porzingis and Tim Hardaway Jr. were the only other Mavericks to score double-digits.

New head coach Jason Kidd and the rest of the gang fell flat, to put it kindly, starting their 2021-22 by shooting just 33 percent from the field. 

And the defense that Kidd vowed would be much-improved from what it has been the last couple of years? Aside from the first couple of minutes of the game where the Mavs jumped out to a 10-2 lead, that new defensive identity will have to wait for another day. 

The good news for Dallas? It's only one game of 82. But that's about the only good news that came from this night.

The Mavs will now quickly shift focus to the second game of the season, as they fly to Toronto to take on the Raptors and Doncic’s good buddy Goran Dragic.

Maybe Dallas GM Nico Harrison and his Raptors counterpart Masai Ujiri can do some business together while the Mavs are in town.

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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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