Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving's Dallas Mavs Show Title-Contending Grit in Clutch Win Over Sacramento Kings

The Dallas Mavericks showed championship-level poise during their 15-point comeback win over the Sacramento Kings on Friday night.

Dalton Trigg | Mar 30, 2024

Mar 29, 2024; Sacramento, California, USA; Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic (77) raises his arms / Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports

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The Dallas Mavericks proved why they should be taken seriously as an NBA title contender with Friday night's win over the Sacramento Kings.

After beating the Kings by 36 points on Tuesday, the Mavs took Sacramento's best punch in Friday's rematch and fell down by 15 points at one point. However, Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the rest of the Mavs' supporting cast pulled together and finished off a clutch, gritty 107-103 win to give them a 1.5 game lead over the Phoenix Suns for the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference standings.

Mar 29, 2024; Sacramento, California, USA; Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic (77) raises his arms / Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports

Irving led the way with 30 points – 14 in the fourth quarter alone – while shooting 11-16 from the field and 3-5 form deep, and Doncic wasn't far behind him with 26 points, nine rebounds and 12 assists while shooting 6-14 overall and 4-8 from deep. However, it was the timely play of several key role players, most notably, Dante Exum, that helped Dallas get over the finish line.

After missing three consecutive shots in the fourth quarter, Exum hit the fourth one he took – a go-ahead 3-pointer to give the Mavs a 106-103 lead with just 28.1 seconds remaining that ended up being the game-winning bucket. The Mavs' trust in Exum to hit that shot after how the previous three trips down the floor went shows how special this roster is as the playoffs approach.

“Amazing, and that speaks of the trust of our team. We know they’re going to double me and Kai a lot of times. That’s the trust we have, the whole team," Doncic said of Exum's clutch 3-pointer.

EXXXXXXXXUM!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/V2uATmQsw4
— MavsHighlights (@MavsHighlights) March 30, 2024

“That shows that our team is great. We’re having fun out there. I think we played terrible today and we still got the win. Outside of Kai. Kai was amazing. We missed a lot of open shots and we still got a win. So that’s amazing.”

With the win, the Mavs improved to 44-29 with just nine games remaining in the regular season. Dallas has now won 10 of its last 11 games, and the only loss during that span came on a second night of a back-to-back in Oklahoma City in a game Doncic didn't play in. The Mavs are now 12-0 when the trio of Doncic, Irving and Daniel Gafford start together.

Although we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, we're starting to see things from the Mavs that we haven't seen since they won the NBA championship in 2011. Even during their 2022 run to the West Finals, you never really got the feeling that the Mavs could go all the way due to their lack of frontcourt depth. Now, though, Dallas has a complete roster with little to no holes, and with a healthy Doncic and Irving leading the way, this team is more than capable of going the distance.

Published Mar 30, 2024

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.