Dallas Basketball

Luka Doncic's MVP Play Brings Dallas Mavs Close to NBA Power Rankings Top 5

The Dallas Mavericks are streaking, and NBA.com has Luka Doncic's squad as one of the most dangerous in the league in this week's Power Rankings.

Dalton Trigg

Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
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There is a lot of positivity surrounding the Dallas Mavericks lately, whether it's the team having top-10 championship odds, or Luka Doncic giving Denver Nuggets star Nilola Jokic a run for his money in the MVP race. Expectations naturally rise when a team wins 11 of 12 games with the postseason right around the corner.

On the latest edition of NBA.com's Power Rankings, the Mavs moved up a spot from No. 7 to No. 6 after another perfect week. Doncic and Kyrie Irving are meshing at an all-time high level, and the rest of the supporting cast, including key trade additions Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington, continue to build chemistry as they become more comfortable around their new teammates.

Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

"The Mavs have won 11 of their last 12 games and their seven straight wins are the longest active winning streak in the league because they put an end to the Rockets’ 11-game streak on Sunday," John Schuhmann writes.

"The Mavs rank fourth on both ends of the floor over this 11-1 stretch, with the defensive improvement the most significant. They held the Kings to just 102.1 points per 100 possessions and just 40-for-97 (41%) shooting in the paint as they picked up two huge wins in Sacramento last week."

With just eight games remaining, the Mavs are currently the No. 5 seed in the West with a big matchup against the Golden State Warriors coming up on Tuesday night. If the Mavs can find a way to win three more games than the Los Angeles Clippers in these final eight games, they'll have a chance to secure home-court advantage in a playoff series for just the second time since the 2011 championship run.

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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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